September 24, 2020 by matray

The American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) has granted the ASHRM Writing Excellence Award to the journal article, “Harnessing the Power of Medical Malpractice Data to Improve Patient Care,” by authors from CRICO Strategies and UMass Memorial Health Care, Inc. The article was published in ASHRM’s Journal of Healthcare Risk Management, Volume 39, Number 3, which was released in Q1 2020.

The ASHRM Writing in Excellence Award was established in 1991 to recognize journal articles with exceptional technical merit and practical value. The 2020 review included 11 articles from Q4 2019, Q1 2020 and Q2 2020, and were scored by ASHRM’s Editorial Review Board.

Study authors include Dana Siegal, RN, CPHRM, CPPS, John Swift, MBA, of CRICO Strategies, Janell Forget, RN, BSN, JD, and Tim Slowick, MBA of UMass Memorial Health Care, Inc.

“UMass’ story offers a tangible, repeatable example of how health systems can use their medical malpractice data—and national comparative data—to improve patient care,” said Michael Paskavitz, vice president of CRICO Strategies. “UMass has invested in leveraging its medical malpractice data and, more importantly, sharing the learnings from the data across its institution. The return on this investment is borne out of its ability to reduce future medical malpractice claims, as described in the article.”

The article describes how, UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Mass., harnesses its deeply coded medical malpractice data and benchmarks its performance against national peers to catalyze clinical improvements. This strategy has proven successful in yielding positive change in such areas as ED ultrasound coverage, obstetrics communication and airway management training. UMass Memorial’s ability to embed claims data use into its culture and to share learning across clinical services offers lessons for healthcare organizations of any size.

The Writing Excellence Award winners will be recognized during the ASHRM 2020 40th Anniversary Conference, an online-only virtual event to be held October 12-14, 2020.

The article is available in the Journal of Healthcare Risk Management (open access until Oct. 31, 2020). A webinar is available that shares key takeaways from the article and is available to all.