HIROC partners with patient-safety advocate, CPSI
Thursday, April 19, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
The CEOs of the Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) signed a letter of understanding April 11, agreeing to a formal partnership with the aim of reaching a common goal.

Peter Flattery, the CEO at HIROC, and his counterpart at CPSI, Philip Hassen, say the formalization of their partnership makes sense because both are interested in improving patient safety.

“CPSI is an organization that has really got its finger on the pulse of patient-safety initiatives, programs and information from across the country,” says Flattery, explaining he doesn’t want to waste time and resources duplicating patient-safety initiatives that are already in place.

“If there’s something already out there why are we re-inventing the wheel? I felt that partnering with CPSI is one way where we can avoid duplicating and work with other organizations including CPSI to help them or support the existing initiatives,” says Flattery.

“We’ll be able to learn from that and quite possibly start new initiatives ourselves that nobody else is working on.”

The first project the two organizations have agreed to work on involves taking a look at HIROC’s claims database in an effort to determine where patient safety needs aren’t being met.

“Can we assess that and look at it to determine whether there are some underlying causes and how do we focus on those down the road?” Hassen asks.

“We both agree that if we can improve the culture of safety in healthcare in general then it has a ripple effect in all that we do,” he says. “There are some clear overlaps of interest and responsibility that we would like to see both of us benefit from.”

Flattery says any efforts to improve patient safety would have a positive impact on HIROC subscribers and their patients.

With a signed letter of understanding, Flattery says the partnership with CPSI is more formal than those with other groups in the past. HIROC representatives sit on a number of CPSI committees and HIROC is the only insurer that is a voting member of CPSI.

“It’s a better approach because it causes both organizations to really look at what’s happening out here and what we can do together,” he says.