The results of our clinic's FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) and AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance) were published at IHI Forum 2021.

・About IHI Forum
This global forum, hosted annually by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is a mecca for medical professionals involved in the quality and safety of medical care. This year, it was held online from December 12th to 5th.

・What is FMEA?
FMEA is an abbreviation for Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, and refers to a method of identifying all possible failure modes (ways in which failures or malfunctions occur) in advance, extracting from them the failure modes with the highest risk, and taking measures to address them.

What is AMR?
AMR is an abbreviation for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), which is called "drug resistance" in Japanese. "Drug resistance" refers to a condition in which a certain type of antibiotic becomes less effective or no longer works. There has been concern for some time that the number of bacteria with "drug resistance" is increasing around the world, leading to the spread of infectious diseases that are resistant to antibiotics.

Clinic Project Overview

• ■FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis)
  Tokyo Midtown Clinic has established a Risk Management Committee (chaired by Director Taguchi) and has been conducting FMEA every year since 2016 as a proactive effort to prevent accidents.
  At this IHI Forum, we introduced the FMEAs that were carried out from 2016 to 2020 and discussed the results that led to operational improvements, improved medical quality and patient safety, as well as future challenges.
• ■ "AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance)" project on correcting antibiotic use
  In Japan, the use of oral cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and macrolides is high, and they tend to be used frequently, especially in outpatient settings. Against this backdrop, the national government has set an AMR goal of reducing overall use by 2020% and reducing the use of oral broad-spectrum antibiotics by half by 33. As we observed a similar usage trend at our clinic, we set the same goal as the national government and began taking measures.
  As a result, we were able to reduce the use of oral antibiotics by 2018% compared to 64, and reduce the use of macrolides and cephalosporins by more than half (45% and 75%, respectively), excluding fluoroquinolones (62% decrease).