Patient Safety Specialist is a position within the Patient Safety Department and Transformation Division of Billings Clinic. Patient Safety Specialist serves as a subject matter expert regarding patient safety systems and provides patient safety consultative services focused on providing the highest quality and safest care to patients while decreasing risk to organization. The Patient Safety Specialist assists the organization in patient safety system activities aimed at adverse event detection, prevention, and response. The position reports to the Director of Patient Safety and Infection Control and assumes responsibility for one or more of the following functions.  Day-to-day review of all clinical occurrence reports and collaboration with an interdisciplinary team, including medication safety. Assigns responsibility for investigation and reporting of patient safety risks and incidents for all areas of Billings Clinic. Scope of work includes acute care hospital, ambulatory clinics, branch clinic locations, ambulatory surgery center, and fully owned regional facilities.  Preparation of case summaries for and facilitation of the Patient Safety Incident Review Group (PSIRG) and Safety Event Classification (SEC) Work Group.%%Investigation of all clinical harm incidents and near misses to include creation of a sequence of events and decisions, interviews with clinical staff who had direct or indirect involvement in the incident, and preparation of a detailed event summary from the perspectives of those involved.  Facilitation of Root Cause Analyses (RCA) teams (e.g., including related documentation and executive summary within Cause Analysis software), and assurance that standard work process is completed. This includes assuring Cause Analysis is thorough, credible, and developed action plans follow evidence-based hierarchy of actions and include measures of success.  Assists operational leaders (i.e., service line director) in understanding and completing Apparent Cause Analysis (ACA) following standard work process.  Assists operational leaders in developing an implementation timeframe. Provides periodic auditing of the implementation phase of the system improvement plan.

Essential Job Functions

• GENERAL
• Assists the Director in the development and communication of department specific and Billings Clinic policies and procedures.
• Participates in both short and long-term planning for the department.
• Identifies needs and sets goals for own growth and development in collaboration with the Director of Infection Control & Patient Safety; meets all mandatory organizational and department requirements.
• Maintains competency in all organizational, departmental, and outside agency environmental, employee or patient safety standards relevant to job performance.
• Interprets, supports, and models behaviors consistent with the mission and philosophy of Billings Clinic.
• PATIENT SAFETY
• Supports patient safety activities and practices through leadership, utilizing the knowledge of the science of patient safety, high reliability organizing, process improvement principles, and quality standards for improved patient care and services.
• Collaborates with the medical staff, nursing, nursing quality, pharmacy, risk management, and other relevant interdisciplinary teams to coordinate patient safety activities event investigations and reporting to appropriate Billings Clinic committees and senior executive leadership.
• Assists in the development of methodologies to fulfill the organization’s strategic initiatives for patient safety management and improvement.
• Educates and assists medical, nursing, residents, other clinical staff, senior executive leadership, and management in identifying and capitalizing upon opportunities for improvement and facilitates cross-functional team development, when appropriate.
• Standardizes processes to optimize learning from occurrence reporting. Performs analysis and analytics to support trend identification.
• Assists in the development and delivery of annual training and provides education in patient safety standards, principles, and use occurrence reporting system.
• Serves as a neutral facilitator for patient safety culture surveys and assists teams and leaders with development of improvement plans for identified opportunities.
• Participates in the planning, nomination, and selection of the annual Great Catch Award program. Publicly recognizes individuals and teams for near miss events and use of HRO Universal Skills.
• HIGH RELIABILITY ORGANIZING
• Demonstrates understanding of high reliability organizing (HRO) principles through use of Universal Skills and behaviors that promote patient and employee safety.
• Utilizes Universal Skills in daily work and serves as a resource for the organization in the application of HRO skills. Serves as a HRO Reliability Champion within department.
• MANAGEMENT OF CRITICAL DATA, INFORMATION, and REPORTS
• Maintains accurate record of events and confidential information contained in reports within patient safety software systems.
• Assures accuracy of serious safety event and cause analyses data entry into program software.
• Reports trends observed in occurrence reports to PSIRG for awareness and action.
• Prepares Patient Safety in Action Alerts using Swiss cheese model and patient stories to engage clinicians and organization for awareness and process improvement.
• Prepares case summaries to Patient Safety Organization (PSO) to advance organizational learning. Attends PSO Safety Event Case Advisory Panel (SECAP) meetings and maintains PSO learning library. Assures upload of case data into secure system is accurate and entered per Patient Safety Evaluation System agreement and administrative policy O-155.
• Assists Director in preparing annual Patient Safety System report.
• Provides custom and routine reports from occurrence reporting system upon request. Coaches operational and executive leaders in appropriate use of voluntary occurrence reporting data.
• RISK MANAGEMENT
• Cooperates and collaborates regularly with Risk Management for both risk prevention measures and clinical event investigation for the hospital, ambulatory clinics, Surgery Center, and fully owned facilities.
• Provides support to Risk Management for resolution of serious customer complaints and issues related to the quality of patient care and/or services and imminent safety/risk situations including mandatory reporting to FDA for serious patient/employee injury or death resulting from a medical device. Adherence to state and federal disclosure of health information obligation and restrictions is critical. Maintains all peer investigation case files and ensures maximum protection from discoverability.
• Reviews, classifies, codes, and investigates occurrence reports. Presents synopsis of selected cases to PSIRG and Safety Event Classification (SEC) Work Group. Recommends plan for taking corrective action.
• Supports and models behaviors consistent with Billings Clinic’s mission, vision, values, code of business conduct and service expectations. Meets all mandatory organizational and departmental requirements. Maintains competency in all organizational, departmental and outside agency standards as it relates to the environment, employee, patient safety or job performance.
• Performs all other duties as assigned or as needed to meet the needs of the department/organization.
Minimum Qualifications

Education
• BSN or Associates in Nursing with Bachelor’s degree in Hospital Administration, Organizational Development, Information Management, or other applicable related field

Experience
• Five (5) years of experience in the health-related field, preferably with clinical experience. Experience in patient safety, quality, performance improvement, and/or risk management is preferred. Experience in formal healthcare leadership is preferred.

Certifications and Licenses
• Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) Preferred or must obtain CPPS credential within 3 years of hire.

Or an equivalent combination of education and experience relating to the above tasks, knowledge, skills and abilities will be considered. Employees that require a licensed or certification must be properly licensed/certified and the licensure/certification must be in good standing.