Ending Suffering Caused by Healthcare Delivery

An unfortunate side effect of healthcare organizations, like hospitals, that depend on people taking care of people is the inevitability of witnessing the impact of human error. Accidents involving the wrong medication or dosage, a delayed diagnosis, or a misstep during an operation can have dire consequences for patients and providers. Often the individual health care provider working in these faulty systems is blamed when these events occur, as opposed to fixing the broken processes and systems. This results in a cycle of shame and blame that does very little to fix the root of the healthcare system issues.

HB Healthcare Safety®, SBC (HBHS) identifies the system and process failures that create the vulnerabilities allowing unfortunate care outcomes and undesirable experiences.

Fixing Vulnerabilities in Healthcare

HBHS developed the Safety Learning System’s® (SLS) Safeware® to guide, facilitate, and capture all possible opportunities for improvement identified during the standardized case review process. From there, HBHS helps clients use those learnings to identify, target, and fix system vulnerabilities in their care policies and practices. After parting ways with its previous technical partner, HBHS brought the Safeware® platform to MentorMate but it required some critical improvements to better achieve its intended goals.

Identify, Prioritize, Fix

The SLS Safeware’s® complex design allows it to manage the organizational learning workflow as it captures a hierarchical matrix of data elements reflecting the nuances of each healthcare system’s organizational structure. HIPAA compliance around personal health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) further adds to the system’s complexity. As soon as HBHS came to us, we conducted a code and architecture review to identify flaws and prioritize bugs.

In the two years since, we’ve dedicated one full-time developer and one full-time QA to bug fixes, feature enhancements, and refactoring to keep the SLS platform running smoothly. Additionally, our Continuation Engineering team provides extra support when needed. Now, we are embarking upon a complete architectural restructuring to further ensure security while obtaining FedRAMP security certification.

Looking Beyond Hospitals

Without any dedicated IT staff of its own, HBHS’ MentorMate team has served as an extension of the company itself, allowing it to grow and move beyond hospitals. Since the SLS Safeware® solution is adaptive, it can be put to use helping any organization that provides person to person care like Veterans Affairs medical centers, mental health providers, prison systems, and educational institutions. Recently, HBHSpartnered with the California prison system to identify system vulnerabilities and opportunities for improvement for inmates at risk of committing suicide. With the ultimate mission of ending suffering in any institution where people are caring for people, this HBHS MentorMate team sees many opportunities to make a meaningful difference.