Discharge Disaster? Shoeless Patient Abandoned Out In The Cold and Dark
While there are a lot of what-ifs about the incident, “we technically don’t know what happened during the encounter,” notes Frank Ruelas, MBA, a patient safety professional and HIPAA consultant who founded HIPAA College in Arizona. “However, there is enough information for us to consider asking questions on how we may have managed this patient if she had presented at our respective ED within our respective hospitals.”
EMRs: Are We There Yet?
Perhaps the infrastructure is in place, but the processes to deliver high quality, safe, and cost-efficient care are not yet widely deployed. EMRs, originally built to capture documentation to drive revenue codes do not meet the basic workflows and processes required by clinicians to deliver care.
Scanning for Maternal Disease
If left undiagnosed or untreated, infectious diseases can be extremely dangerous and even life-threatening, so it is critical that testing and treatment for both the woman and baby is completed according to clinical practice guidelines.
Protecting your Patients: Violence and Active Shooters
Experts on healthcare safety say nonverbal body language known as “behaviors of concern” can precede actual violence, and if caught early, de-escalation tactics can be used to intervene and keep the situation from becoming violent.
OhioHealth Sepsis Effort ‘Saved About 250 Lives’
A systemwide initiative involving physicians, nurses, laboratory operations, and pharmacists has helped the nonprofit reduce its sepsis mortality rate.
Checklists and Robots Make It Easier To Clean Patient Rooms
Healthcare systems deal with the perennial problem of properly cleaning and disinfecting patient rooms, both while they are occupied and upon discharge when getting ready for new occupants.
Unfortunately, it’s not a cut-and-dry process, and most hospitals don’t have a set protocol for making sure all surfaces are cleaned the same way.
EMR ‘Nudging’ Could Curtail Opioid Prescribing
Emergency Departments prescribe fewer opioid pills to their patients when the EMR default setting was set to 10 tablets.
Rights and Restraints: The Need For Good Restraint and Seclusion Policies
The misuse of restraints has led to death by asphyxiation, as well as complications such as nerve injuries, incontinence, pneumonia, and pressure ulcers. But despite the dangers, CMS says it’s documented over 1,400 related deficiencies between 2011 and 2015.
‘Explainable AI’ Could Reduce Readmissions (and Win Clinicians’ Trust)
This article first appeared January 16, 2018 on HealthLeaders Media. This technology can accurately predict 30-day readmissions and clarify the AI process for clinicians. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to change the healthcare industry, but gaining the trust of clinicians to use it can be a barrier to adoption. “A lot of the resistance … Continued
The Tale of The Flying Gurney, and Other Events That Should Never Happen, But Still Do
While hospitals do their best to limit the number of so-called “never events” that happen to their patients, recent events show that there is still work to be done.
In patient safety circles, “never events” are mistakes that should simply never happen—seemingly commonsense mistakes such as a surgeon accidentally leaving a scalpel inside a patient, a newborn infant given to the wrong parents, or any death of a patient due to the gross negligence of a caregiver.