Quantros and HPTI Deliver New Solution to Address Safety Culture in High-Risk Hospital Departments.

MILPITAS, Calif. -- "Establishing a Culture of Safety: A Collaborative Approach for Labor and Delivery Units" Focuses on Labor and Delivery Nursing Departments at Acute Hospitals

Quantros, Inc., a leading provider of web-based healthcare applications and services for safety and risk management, quality, performance improvement and accreditation and compliance today announced the release of a new program, Establishing a Culture of Safety: A Collaborative Approach for Labor and Delivery Units. This first offering from Quantros in conjunction with partner HPTI, a leading safety culture consulting firm, is designed for high-risk environments and focuses on Labor and Delivery Nursing departments within acute hospitals.

Throughout the healthcare provider industry communication and teamwork have proven critical to patient safety in high-risk care areas. In the Sentinel Event Alert Issue 30 the Joint Commission concluded that the majority of perinatal death and injury cases are related to problems with organizational culture and with communication among caregivers. The Joint Commission recommends that hospitals conduct team training in perinatal areas to teach staff to work together and communicate more effectively.

This collaborative program focuses the tools and training necessary to establish a culture of safety in a fast-paced, stressful, and high-risk environment at the department level. This project also provides monitoring and measurement to demonstrate successful changes and ensure those changes are sustained over time.

According to Dr. Sanjaya Kumar, Chief Medical Officer of Quantros, "Quantros is committed to assisting hospitals in establishing a culture of safety in clinical departments where stellar teamwork is vital to reduce the risk of injury and error to patients. Education and onsite consulting through human factors skills training is integral to improving interpersonal skills and communication skills of departmental staff. This process expertise is augmented by the use of Quantros technologies."

Scott Shutack, CEO of Human Performance Training Institute added, "HPTI is committed to providing value to our customers. The collaborative nature of this program will have tremendous impact on hospital patient safety initiatives. This program will provide solutions and best practices to proactively identify threats and therefore, reduce exposure to risk."

Quantros is inviting a limited number of teams from Labor and Delivery Nursing Units to join in this program. The program will concentrate efforts at improving organizational culture and communication using its web-based tools for measuring and sustaining changes over a twelve month period.

The following activities are included as part of Establishing a Culture of Safety: A Collaborative Approach for Labor and Delivery Units:

--Participant teams will begin to establish a safety culture at the department level through an assessment utilizing Quantros Survey Director with a web-enabled AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

--The program will feature a kickoff meeting with an OB/GYN clinical expert and focused sessions on the steps necessary to create a safety culture.

--Over four months the teams will have several Web-Ex educational sessions on aviation safety models, crew resource management, and human factors skills.

--Each team will have access to a version of Quantros SRM, a leading safety and risk tool, for reporting incidents and near misses within the department as part of this program

--Each team will select two customized consultant visits while progress is measured with Quantros Safety & Risk application for adverse event and near miss reporting.

--Successes will be celebrated at a final Achievement Congress.

--Participants will have continued access to Quantros measurement tools for the department up to eight months after program conclusion to sustain the progress made.

For additional information on Establishing a Culture of Safety: A Collaborative Approach for Labor and Delivery Units or other Quantros products and services, please visit the Quantros website at www.quantros.com, email [e-mail] or call Quantros at 408-957-3300.

About Quantros

Founded in 1996, Quantros serves the healthcare industry with innovative, clinically-based products and services in the areas of safety and risk management, quality and performance improvement and accreditation and compliance. Quantros solutions are completely web-based and provide real-time actionable knowledge for quality data capture, monitoring, reporting, comparatives and benchmarking. Quantros products and services are currently used by over 900 healthcare facilities throughout the United States. Quantros is headquartered in Silicon Valley and maintains sales and service personnel throughout the United States.

About The Human Performance Training Institute (HPTI)

The Human Performance Training Institute (HPTI) was founded to help improve teamwork in safety-sensitive settings in order to avoid and mitigate errors, incidents and accidents. Their work is derived from Aviation Crew Resource Management (CRM) training that has helped to create and sustain a safety-first culture, resulting in an airline safety record exceeding six-sigma levels of performance.

The principle goal of CRM is to equip individuals with human factors tools to use in an operational environment to overcome the catastrophic consequences of human error. HPTI provides the human factors skills necessary to detect, prioritize and manage risks and errors in a technology-centered team-based environment