A Revolutionary Approach to A & E Medicine, Patient Safety and Risk Management

The Sullivan Group (TSG) was founded to help A & E practitioners establish best practice, enhance patient safety, and reduce both medical errors and the resulting exposure to litigation. Founded by Daniel J. Sullivan, MD, JD, FACEP, TSG has assembled an outstanding group of medical, risk, and information technology professionals to create solutions to the substantial challenge of providing cutting edge medical care in a safe practice environment. TSG programmes represent a revolution in the approach to patient safety and risk management.

Dr. Daniel J. Sullivan is a board-certified emergency physician with over 25 years of emergency medicine practice experience, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, and a past president of the Illinois Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). Dr. Sullivan, who is also an attorney, is an editor of ACEP’s Emergency Medicine Risk Management, 2d Ed., and has authored numerous books and publications, and provided hundreds of lectures focussed on patient safety and risk management in emergency medicine.

Over 600 emergency departments in the US have instituted The Sullivan Group’s Emergency Medicine Risk Initiative (EMRI®), which includes web-based patient safety education, real-time risk management tools at the bedside, and web-based performance appraisal with feedback to the A & E departmental team. The results have been dramatic. One client with over 180 hospitals has reduced its A & E clinical negligence claims by 38% over a 3-year period.

Risk management must be real-time and occur at the bedside.  The Sullivan Group has designed ‘intelligent’ medical records, both paper and electronic, allowing A & E doctors to apply the principles of patient safety and risk management during the patient consultation. 

This is the bedrock of patient safety and risk management in any risk-sensitive organisation.  Historically, safety and risk management have been successfully achieved by those organisations (e.g., aviation, nuclear industry) that adhere to the fundamentals of safety education, intelligent and immediate processes to guarantee quality, and a statistical measure of performance.  The Sullivan Group has applied these principles to the practice of A & E medicine with astonishing results.  The Cycle of Patient Safety and Risk Management has had a profound and beneficial impact on patient outcomes and on minimising legal risk.