Improving Reliability with Root Cause Analysis

Improving Reliability with Root Cause Analysis

 

Root cause analysis (RCA) has an image problem. Because various regulatory agencies require RCA to be used under specific circumstances, usually following an adverse event, the tool is primarily viewed as reactive. When these “sentinel events” occur, we pull out the microscope—RCA—and take a deeper look. Used in this way, RCA is often viewed as a “money-taker” because it appears only to consume people’s time and resources when they already feel overloaded. Rarely do we ask for a return on investment (ROI) associated with an RCA.

Read More »

Usability Testing of a U-500 Insulin Syringe: A Human Factors Approach

Usability Testing of a U-500 Insulin Syringe: A Human Factors Approach

Currently, 8.3% of the population, 25.8 million people, has diabetes in the United States. Not all of those 25.8 million have been diagnosed as diabetics. Among patients with diabetes, 90% to 95% are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which often requires treatment with insulin (CDC, 2010).

Read More »

Plan Ahead to Prevent Slips, Trips, and Falls

Plan Ahead to Prevent Slips, Trips, and Falls

 

Slips, trips, and falls on flat surfaces are the leading cause of workplace injury. And, in the healthcare industry, incident rates are 90% higher than in all other private industries combined, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ national census of nonfatal injuries.

Read More »

Nursing Home Tackles Readmissions with In-house Primary Care

Readmissions

Nursing Home Tackles Readmissions with In-house Primary Care

 

Across the country, healthcare providers are grappling with high rates of readmissions to hospitals within 30 days after discharge. Readmission to the hospital is stressful for patients and their families; costly; and, many times, avoidable.

Read More »

Evolving to Health 3.0

Health IT & Quality

Evolving to Health 3.0

 

The dramatic shift to value-based reimbursement requires all providers to disrupt their care processes and workflows to ensure the delivery of high quality, safe care at a reasonable cost. For more than four decades these same providers thrived in an environment where providing more care easily generated higher prices and profits. In that former reimbursement model, a serious and dangerous moral hazard existed where the instinct to “do no harm” clashed with a similarly powerful driver to maximize income.

Read More »

FentaNYL Patch Fatalities Linked to ‘Bystander Apathy’

ISMP

FentaNYL Patch Fatalities Linked to ‘Bystander Apathy’

 

ISMP just learned about another child that died after gaining access to a transdermal fentaNYL patch. This time it was a 15-month-old boy who had been cuddling with his mother, sleeping on her chest as they both took a nap. The boy’s mother had been wearing a fentaNYL patch on her chest to treat pain associated with multiple sclerosis. When the mother awoke, she found her son unresponsive.

Read More »

News

News

ANA Issues Standards for Safe Patient Handling as Foundation for National Drive to Improve Worker Safety

 

The American Nurses Association (ANA) has published new national standards for safe patient handling and mobility that are designed to infuse a stronger culture of safety in healthcare work environments and provide a universal foundation for policies, practices, regulations, and legislation to protect patients and healthcare workers from injury.

Read More »

Partnering with Patients and Families from the Bedside to the Boardroom

Patient- and Family-Centered Care

Partnering with Patients and Families from the Bedside to the Boardroom

Imagine a setting where patients and families feel confident and comfortable asking questions, providing valuable historical information, and discussing their health priorities in open dialogue with their providers. How many adverse medical events could be avoided? How many duplicated tests could be eliminated?

Read More »

Predictive Analytics Drives Patient Engagement and Improves Care

Analytics

Predictive Analytics Drives Patient Engagement and Improves Care

 

Despite the best efforts of clinicians around the country, healthcare delivery is still largely a cottage industry. Just like the old family-run corner store, or the artist down the street who makes jewelry to sell at local craft fairs, isolated teams of wonderfully talented and committed individuals have for many years done the best they can to provide rescue care.

Read More »