Mayo Clinic Key In To Quality

Twenty-five years after the landmark To Err Is Human report launched the modern patient safety movement, healthcare organizations face a new challenge: learning effectively from the growing volume of safety information they collect. In this episode of Key in to Quality, a multidisciplinary Mayo Clinic team discusses a new AI-enabled safety platform designed to address what Mayo Clinic calls the “safety reporting paradox.” Using multiple AI agents, the platform reviews safety reports, identifies reportable events, detects serious harm and sentinel events and validates results while keeping safety professionals integral to the process. The conversation also explores a pattern discovery agent that analyzes thousands of low-harm and no-harm events to identify emerging risks before serious harm occurs, helping shift safety efforts from reactive response to proactive learning. Another development is the “patient safety vital sign,” an AI-enabled tool designed to provide real-time, individualized assessments of patient safety risk at the bedside. The episode concludes by examining how AI can augment human expertise, reduce administrative burden and expand safety teams’ capacity to focus on investigation, improvement and prevention. Host: Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timorgenthaler/Host: Sheri Nemec| https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sheri-nemec-a627982a/#mayokeyintoquality

This episode of Key in to Quality explores how patient and family stories can add meaning and context to healthcare quality, safety and performance data. Erin Fairchild, Kelly Vorseth and Madeline Rauma share how Mayo Clinic captures patient feedback, organizes meaningful comments and turns them into Mission Moments that help connect teams to purpose and organizational values. The discussion highlights how simple survey questions such as “What impressed you?” and “What disappointed you?” can generate richer, more actionable feedback. As the volume of responses has grown, natural language processing and AI tools have helped categorize comments and identify themes that support improvement, recognition and leadership decision-making. The episode also examines how Mission Moments and other storytelling approaches bring patient experiences to life across meetings, huddles and communications. Through examples from nursing and other areas, the guests show how stories can recognize staff contributions, reinforce culture and highlight the impact of compassion, teamwork and communication. Listeners also learn practical ways organizations can start small by creating simple, accessible systems for collecting and sharing patient stories.  Host: Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timorgenthaler/Host: Sheri Nemec| https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sheri-nemec-a627982a/#mayokeyintoquality

In this episode of Key In to Quality, a multidisciplinary Mayo Clinic team discusses how improving the patient experience can strengthen the quality of surgical care. The conversation explores how viewing the surgical journey through the eyes of patients and families is helping identify opportunities to improve communication, preparation, predictability and support before, during and after surgery. Drawing on patient interviews, observations, survey data and staff insights, the team identified consistent themes that led to practical improvements across the surgical experience. These include personalized pre-surgery videos, streamlined pre-registration, enhanced waiting room support and new approaches to keeping patients and families informed throughout their care. The episode also highlights the importance of collaboration among physicians, nurses and operational teams to improve every touchpoint of the patient journey. Timely, transparent communication helps reduce uncertainty, build trust and improve the overall patient experience. Listeners will learn how Mayo Clinic is using patient feedback, operational data and continuous quality improvement principles to enhance surgical care and ensure improvements remain effective as patient needs and services continue to evolve. Guests: Dr. Sarah Dodd | LinkedIn Andrea Nelson | LinkedIn Kayla Simiele | LinkedIn #PatientExperience #HealthcareQuality #MayoClinic #QualityImprovement #PatientCenteredCare Host: Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timorgenthaler/Host: Sheri Nemec| https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sheri-nemec-a627982a/#mayokeyintoquality

This episode of Key in to Quality communication as an important driver of healthcare quality and examines whether communication skills can be strengthened through coaching and training. A Mayo Clinic pilot study compared individualized communication coaching, a communication skills class and usual practice to understand the potential impact on patient experience. The study found encouraging trends. Clinicians who received individualized coaching achieved higher overall patient experience scores, while both the coaching and communication-class groups improved on nine of 10 patient experience measures. Although the small sample size limited statistical significance, the findings point to opportunities for further study and suggest that intentional communication development may benefit both patients and clinicians. The discussion also highlights practical considerations for healthcare organizations, including partnering with communication experts, securing leadership support, designing interventions that fit clinician workflows and starting with small pilot programs. The episode reinforces that communication is a learnable skill and a core component of quality care, with the potential to strengthen trust, connection and the overall patient experience. Host: Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timorgenthaler/Host: Sheri Nemec| https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sheri-nemec-a627982a/#mayokeyintoquality

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) can occur even when medications are prescribed and administered correctly, yet reporting has historically varied across Mayo Clinic campuses, limiting opportunities to identify enterprise-wide trends and improve patient safety. In this episode of Key in to Quality, a multidisciplinary team representing pharmacy, nursing, patient safety, quality, analytics and regional stakeholders shares how they developed a standardized, enterprise-wide approach to ADR reporting and evaluation. After reviewing existing safety processes, FDA MedWatch standards and frontline feedback, the team created a five-level ADR severity scale focused on patient outcomes rather than medication errors. The scale was integrated into Mayo Clinic's electronic patient safety reporting system and paired with enterprise dashboards that enable standardized reporting, trend analysis and organizational learning. Since implementation, the framework has improved reporting consistency, strengthened FDA reporting and enhanced the ability to identify system-level safety opportunities. Validation showed users applied the scale with more than 85% agreement compared with expert review, demonstrating how standardized reporting, multidisciplinary collaboration and enterprise data can transform individual adverse drug reactions into actionable insights that improve medication safety across the organization.  Host: Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timorgenthaler/Host: Sheri Nemec| https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sheri-nemec-a627982a/#mayokeyintoquality