Page 12 - Castle MD Spring 2020

Kathryn Raethel Appointed to Board of Directors of the Baldrige Foundation Raethel to Serve Two-year Term
Simple mistakes and the art of Check, Check, Double Check By Andrea Suzuki
Director of Compliance
In 2017, Aetna sent letters relating to pharmacy benefits to roughly 12,000 members. The windows of the envelopes used were too large, allowing sensitive PHI to be on display for all those who came into contact with the envelopes. As a result of a class action lawsuit, Aetna is estimated to have paid $17 million dollars as compensation to those individuals, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
This is one example of how a simple mistake can have dire consequences for patients and health institutions alike; and how a simple Check, Check, Double Check could have avoided the disastrous mailing.
Adventist Health Castle President Kathryn Raethel, RN, MPH, MHA, FACHE, was appointed on Jan. 1, 2020, to the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Among Ms. Raethel’s duties, she will serve as a member of the Board’s Audit Committee.
“Kathryn is a highly-regarded leader in both healthcare and throughout the Baldrige Community,” said Al Faber, President and CEO of the Baldrige Foundation. “She became President of Adventist Health Castle (AHC) in 2011 and led AHC to receive the Baldrige National Quality Award in 2017.”
“I was drawn to Castle because of its commitment to quality,” Raethel said upon her appointment. “The care we deliver
to our patients is more effective, more efficient, and more empathic because of the Baldrige Excellence Framework. This journey has been much more than fruitful. It has been lifesaving.”
“We often speak of the Baldrige Award multiplier effect,” continued Faber.
“The program is structured so that
Award recipients share best practices with other organizations to ensure that Baldrige reaches the maximum number of organizations throughout the economy. By bringing her Baldrige experience and expertise to the Board, along with her understanding of the health care sector, Kathryn’s role-model leadership will have a positive impact on the Foundation Board and throughout the Baldrige Community.”
“The Baldrige Foundation is critical to
the continued operation and growth of
the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and to the entirety of the Baldrige Enterprise,” said Raethel, “and I am honored to have been asked to play a role in the Foundation’s efforts.”
12 · CASTLE MD
A large amount of breaches that we see are a result of simple mistakes: a patient being handed the wrong discharge information, the wrong prescription or medical information being sent to the wrong fax number. When breaches like this happen, we are obligated to report it to the federal government and to the patients involved. But more importantly, while these simple mistakes are on a smaller scale, these types of mistakes can have the same
horrifying impact on individuals as they did in the Aetna example. And, like the Aetna example, these mistakes could have easily been avoided with a quick Check, Check, Double Check before acting.
Confidentiality is an integral part of the care that we provide our patients. That is why it is vital to Check, Check, Double Check before handing any patient information over.