California Hospitals Launch Statewide Patient Safety Campaign

Access to safe, high-quality care for all patients is the mission of California's community hospitals. Through focused hospital-based initiatives and regional and statewide patient safety collaboratives, hospitals are leading the way into a new era in patient safety. To showcase these efforts, the California Hospital Association (CHA) today launched a statewide patient safety awareness campaign.

The campaign, "Caring is Our Calling," features a statewide television ad, a web-based video, patient safety issue briefs, and digital and social media activities. A Spanish-language version of the TV ad also will be available.

"Hospitals across California are making huge strides in improving the quality of care by advancing a 'culture of safety,'" says CHA president and CEO C. Duane Dauner. "Our campaign will highlight these efforts, as well as engage patients as our partners - with reminders about good safety practices that everyone should follow."

"California's hospitals hold a sacred trust with the communities they serve," Dauner adds. "When patients and their families turn to their local community hospitals, they expect to receive safe, high-quality care. Hospitals across our state have embraced this obligation and are working diligently to improve quality outcomes and prevent patient harm and hospital-acquired conditions for all who receive care."

The campaign's 60-second TV spot is designed to inform the public about the efforts hospitals are making to ensure safer care and to empower patients and visitors to help in this effort.

"Every hospital is working to eliminate preventable infections," Dauner notes. "But it is a shared responsibility involving everyone who comes to the hospital. Our message is intended to remind everyone doctors, nurses, hospital employees, patients and visitors that we all play a role in ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality patient care."

The ad is a reminder that everyone should get an annual flu vaccine and the importance of hand hygiene in preventing the spread of infections.

The campaign also will highlight a number of initiatives underway at hospitals across the state aimed at reducing hospital-acquired conditions such as sepsis, central line-associated bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers and patient falls.

All of the campaign materials will be available on a dedicated website at: www.CaringisourCalling.org

CHA, based in Sacramento, is the statewide leader representing the interests of more than 450 hospitals and health systems in California..