Brigham and Women's

Last week, Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, cited some work by the staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital to reduce the number of falls patients take in the hospital. Today, he notes his own staff have taken a different approach to the problem. And then he looks at a map of where the two hospitals are and wonders:

This work at BIDMC and the work cited in the previous post from Brigham and Women's Hospital are exemplary and clearly complimentary. But what is striking is the lack of coordination between the two efforts. Two Harvard teaching hospitals, separated by only a few blocks, both concerned about patient safety, have had virtually no contact on this topic.

I hope I am misinterpreting, but I am concerned that this may be one of those instances in which the competitiveness among the Boston hospitals has spilt over into the safety arena. For sure, there are other areas in which information about quality of care is shared and protocols are examined together. But wherever there is a lack of discourse, opportunities for collaboration are lost.

Brigham and Women's Hospital reports a surgical team yesterday performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man who suffered serious injuries in a fall:

The team of seven plastic surgeons and one ear, nose and throat surgeon, nurses, anesthesiologists and residents worked for 17 hours in replacing the mid-face area of the patient including the nose, hard palate, upper lip, facial skin, muscles of facial animation and the nerves that power them and provide sensation.

They used tissue from the body of a man whose family had agreed to donate his organs after his death.

It's a pleasant sound when you're starting a fire, but not so good when you slip on some ice and break two bones in your leg. Mike Ball reports the only thing worse was the sound of the orthopedic surgeon and an aide snapping the bones back into place - at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Ball, who lives in Jamaica Plain, also explains why, when the ambulance came, he refused to go to the closer Faulkner Hospital - not that he needed to worry:

Immediately, the EMT shot back, "I wouldn't take my dog or cat to the Faulkner."

Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess discusses the full-page ad Brigham and Women's and Mass. General took out in the Globe today to tell us how wonderful they are (no doubt out of a sense of bursting pride, not because of a Globe Spotlight article on how they are using their muscle to boost their reimbursement rates).