Ochsner Health System is an academic, not-for-profit medical center that includes seven hospitals and over 35 health centers spread throughout Southeast Louisiana. Following Hurricane Katrina, Ochsner acquired several local for-profit hospitals into its network. Along with these new hospitals came different incident reporting cultures for reporting. In fact, some sites weren’t reporting any incidents for fear of admitting mistakes.

Ochsner spent a lot of time standardizing reporting across its site but the information was never complete due to a lag in data & a combination of electronic and paper-based incident reporting. So, Ochsner decided to purchase Risk MonitorPro® (RMPro) from rL Solutions. Unfortunately, when Ochsner gave notice to its existing software vendor, the company decided to suspend service in just 6 weeks. Learn how Ochsner managed to deploy RMPro quickly.

Learning Objectives

• Conducting a rapid cycle implementation of an electronic occurrence reporting system
• Standardizing occurrence reporting training & education across a health system, including definitions
• Improving how data is used to support leadership involvement in patient safety
• Using occurrence reporting data in rapid cycle patient safety improvement initiatives

About Donna Saxton

Donna is currently the Vice President of Quality and Safety for Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, LA. Donna has a B.S. in Microbiology and a B.A. in Chemistry from Michigan State University. She received her MHA in Healthcare Administration and an MPH in Epidemiology from Tulane University. She is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Prior to joining Ochsner, Donna was the Associate Administrator for Performance Improvement at Slidell Memorial Hospital located in Slidell, LA and was employed by Tenet Healthcare as an Associate Administrator for the Corporation in Santa Barbara, CA.