As CMO for a large health system including an academic medical center, 25 community hospitals and 2600 physicians, I am deeply concerned about safety during transitions of care. This approach has the potential to enhance safety at the grass roots level where the transfer of responsibility takes place. We will be interested in participating in further development or use of this approach (and related tools) as soon as they are available.

IPASS has made a significant improvement in patient safety at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, and we are now spreading it across Stanford Medical Center as well. I have seen first-hand how the IPASS framework has helped expose potential patient safety errors, and saved patients from having to experience these errors. As a residency program director, I have seen how easy it is to teach and implement. This is the single most effective patient safety educational bundle that I have seen in my 9 years of program leadership!

Every patient knows that poor communication can lead to errors. I-PASS is a simple, structured communication method that has led to a 30% reduction in medical error in pilot hospitals. There are very few interventions in the world that can claim that kind of success rate.