Williamson Health

Sharon Gilliam

Gilliam’s Career Experiences and Milestones

My journey into patient safety and quality began when I was working night shift as an ICU nurse. I was asked to help establish a unit-based Falls Committee and I was instantly hooked! I loved being involved in process improvement and looking for ways to reduce patient harm and improve outcomes. I realized I wanted to do this work full time. I transitioned into a quality role at a small, community hospital that was part of a system. In this role, I was blessed to be able to work on many different quality and patient safety initiatives and projects including sepsis care, readmission reduction, nurse and physician peer review, transitions of care, coding and others. I then took on a role that was focused on system patient safety and regulatory compliance. In this role, I oversaw regulatory readiness and survey management. I also managed clinical risk management which is an integral part of patient safety. These experiences allowed me the ability to learn and become proficient in many areas within quality and patient safety to be able to serve in my current role. One of the many reasons I love patient safety and quality is there is always something new you can learn and master. It is never boring!

Patient Safety Adapting to the Advancements in Digital Health and Telemedicine

Digital health and telemedicine are becoming part of healthcare delivery whether we are ready or not. These advancements have the potential to improve safety, efficiency and patient satisfaction. It is essential that patient safety is a consideration and part of the conversation when looking at implementing digital health, AI and telemedicine. There needs to be ongoing monitoring of these programs to ensure patient safety is maintained. Digital health should be part of the quality assurance program with oversight to ensure these programs are meeting expectations and delivering desired outcomes. We are also seeing transitions with regulatory authorities related to this. For example, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) transitioning core measures that were traditionally manually abstracted by a human to electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) that are automatically abstracted from the electronic health record (EHR). With this transition, it is critical that patient safety and quality professionals work with their informatics teams and HER vendors to ensure documentation quality and completeness as well as accurate mapping to the eCQM.

Empowering Active Patient Participation in Safety and Quality Initiatives

Patients have a unique and valuable insight into patient safety and quality. My favorite aspect of my role is interacting with patients and families on patient safety and quality initiatives. Our organization established a Patient and Family Advisory Council which is a great way to engage with patients and families on initiatives that are important to them. It also provides a venue to have candid conversations on how we can better engage patients and families in healthcare delivery and quality. Our leaders complete daily rounds with patients and families which allows us to identify potential opportunities for patient safety and quality just in time and work with the patient and family through this process. We also utilize patient surveys and patient/family feedback (either through in person, email, phone, written) in our patient safety and quality improvement processes. We appreciate when patients and families tell us both their positive and negative experiences related to patient safety and quality. We see this as an important metric in determining whether our quality and safety processes are working as intended and how they are being perceived by our patients.

“It is essential that patient safety is a consideration and part of the conversation when looking at implementing digital health, AI and telemedicine.”

Innovation in Patient Safety for Regulatory Compliance and Cost Efficiency

It can be quite challenging to balance the need for innovation with the demands of regulatory compliance. The demands of regulatory compliance and cost efficiency are increasing every year. However, we know that in order to maintain and improve quality and patient safety, we must continue to evolve and innovate. This requires time and resources that are often not always available. We have really worked on improving efficiency within our processes related to regulatory compliance which allows us more time to work on process improvement and innovation. We also have a designated position that focuses on process improvement which has helped us ensure we are allocating time and resources to innovation and ongoing improvement.

Approach to data Transparency

When it comes to data, we really try to help the stakeholders understand the rationale and methodology behind the data. It is important to help the care team know what the data is truly evaluating especially if we want to make changes to have a positive impact on the data and this helps build trust. Additionally, when sharing data with the care team, it is helpful to communicate the processes involved that have a direct correlation to the data they are seeing. I think this helps the care team understand how they contribute to the number they are seeing and provides them with some control over the outcome. It is also important to continue to be transparent with the data if you are working on process improvements to impact data. The care team will be more engaged and trusting of the process if they are able to see how their work is impacting the data.

Influence of Emerging Trends in Patient Safety on Care Departments

I am very excited about the technologies emerging related to documentation and AI such as ambient listening. The necessary documentation in the EHR takes a lot of time on the part of the clinician which often leads to less time available to focus on the patient. Therefore, I am excited that these solutions may help us more accurately capture important information in the EHR while allowing the care team to spend more time with patients and families. This is a new an emerging field so our team is working on doing further research on these solutions and how they could be integrated into care delivery.

Hacks to Excel in Patient Safety and Quality

I would encourage those who are interested in patient safety and quality to get involved in quality initiatives. Are there specific topics or areas of quality that interest you? Reach out to your quality and patient safety colleagues – we are always looking for people to get engaged on projects and help us move the needle on patient safety and quality.