About Us
Safe Patient Care Across the Continuum
CHIRAL facilitates patient safety learning laboratories. The center’s projects incorporate research methodology into quality improvement work, creating flexible, innovative techniques for improving care transitions. Interrelated threats to patient safety are identified, multidisciplinary teams produce new ways of thinking, and innovative design approaches are applied to create interventions that are evaluated in a clinical environment.
CHIRAL Projects
The previous work at CHIRAL included three concurrent projects studying transitions of care. While the projects employed a similar design and engineering approach to clinical redesign, each project had a distinct research team, methodology, and focus.
- Neurological Emergency Transfers
- Transfers Within the Hospital
- Discharges to SNFs
The primary aim of this project was to assess and improve care transitions into the hospital for patients with atraumatic ICH/SAH. The study units were outside sending hospitals and all involved hospital services, including patient transfer service, emergency department, neurology, neurosurgery, diagnostic radiology, pharmacy, blood bank, and bed management. The mixed method data collection included process mapping, observations, semi-structured interviews, real-time surveys, medical record review, and audits and content analysis.
The team shared findings and solicit feedback from all involved parties to inform and validate our analyses. These analyses then informed the design and implementation of a multi-modal intervention to improve the quality and safety of the transfer process.