MIDAS+ System Offers Anonymous Reporting to Improve Patient Safety

Jason Adelman, MD

Quality improvement and patient safety stand at the core of Montefiore's clinical mission to heal, teach, discover, and advance the health of the community. The MIDAS+ incident reporting system, implemented in 2012, enables hospital staff to submit anonymous incident reports of patient safety issues for analysis and improvement. "Some of our best insights arise when we examine why and how errors happen, so that we can determine the best approach to an effective intervention," said Dr. Jason Adelman, Montefiore Patient Safety Officer.

According to current protocol at Montefiore, when an error occurs, the staff member who became aware of it completes a written report through the MIDAS+ system, from which trending and investigation reports are produced. "Errors" include unsafe conditions, near misses, and adverse events (resulting in actual harm to a patient). In recent months, more physicians and house staff have reported errors, and their unique perspective of these events makes their input particularly valuable, according to Dr. Adelman.

Left: The MIDAS+ link on the MMC intranet (full).

Montefiore’s data is shared with the ECRI Insitute’s web-based Patient Safety Organization (PSO), where it is merged with and compared to the error reports from health care institutions nationwide. Data from the ECRI PSO is used by Dr. Adelman and colleagues in developing and testing appropriate interventions. “With every medical error root cause we identify, we are saving lives, and our physicians are a critical link to helping us identify those causes,” Dr. Adelman said.

Catherine Skae, MD, DSc

Error and near-miss reporting are integral components of creating a safe, high-quality clinical learning environment for house staff, which is a new and special focus of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in its next accreditation system, according to Dr. Catherine Skae, Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education at Einstein and Vice President for Graduate Medical Education at Montefiore. Additionally, a newly formed institution-wide House Staff Patient Safety/Quality Improvement Council with Internal Medicine faculty and trainee participation will also be reviewing these reports with a focus on improving clinical training as well as patient safety.  

Attending physicians and house staff are encouraged to use the MIDAS+ incident reporting system, and can access it through the link in the left column of the Montefiore Medical Center intranet.