Patient Safety - Improving Safe Clinical Practices

UMBH is committed to promoting an environment in which practitioners and facilities are encouraged to improve the safety of their practices. UMBH's QI Program activities include patient safety components such as treatment record documentation guidelines, coordination of care between behavioral health care practitioners and primary care physicians, coordination of care between multiple behavioral health care practitioners, coordination of care between inpatient and outpatient treatment, and handling of complaints dealing with lack of communication between practitioners and patients.

UMBH requests that providers that encounter critical incidents report it to the UMBH Patient Safety Coordinator within 72 hours.  UMBH monitors the following critical incidents:

1. Prescription Drug toxicity
2. Re-admission within 7 days
3. Acquired injury while hospitalized
4. Severe reaction occurred during seclusion/restraint
5. Unexpected death
6. Suicide attempt completed
7. Homicide attempt completed
8. Unable to access UMBH by phone
9. Unable to access care resulting in poor outcome
10. Other quality of care, service or safety issue (specify)

A provider incident report form can be used to report the critical incident to UMBH Patient Safety Coordinator. 

The following links provide useful information for practitioners and facilities regarding patient safety and utilizing safe clinical practices.

• Avoiding Medication Errors
• Guidelines for Physicians 

• Advances in Patient Safety: From Research to Implementation
• Fact Sheet -- 30 Safe Practices for Better Health Care:  PDF version or HTML version
• A consensus Report -- Safe Practices for Better Healthcare: Summary (National Quality Forum):  PDF version or HTML version

If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact the UMBH QI Department at 1-800-294-8642, or send an e-mail to umbhadmin@med.miami.edu