Step Up Your Game: Staying Compliant With Joint Commission Hand Hygiene Requirements
This new focus on compliance will deliver increased patient safety, enhanced quality of care, and improved economic outcomes. And all of these fit right in with the drive for healthcare organizations to achieve high reliability.
A Novel Approach to Hospital Efficiency
While recognizing the value of many traditional utilization management processes, including labor productivity, staffing ratios, bed type assignments, throughput initiatives, and supply chain management, the team’s goal was to find new opportunities for improved resource management in bedside care delivery.
The Correct Use of Physical Restraints in the Inpatient Setting
Most healthcare providers do not overuse patient restraints maliciously, but systematic overuse can have disastrous results—both for the patients and the institution.
Flu Vaccine Programs For Providers: Making It Legal, Effective, and Mandatory
Many healthcare workers already understand that getting a flu shot every fall helps protect not only themselves, but also coworkers, friends and family, and of course patients. Others, however, will require more than a reminder of the 2017–2018 flu season, which was the worst in nearly a decade, to go get vaccinated for the flu.
FDA: Only You Can Prevent Surgery Fires
The alert is targeted at healthcare professionals involved in surgical procedures—such as surgeons, surgical technicians, anesthesiologists, anesthesiologist assistants, certified registered nurse anesthetists, physician assistants, and nurses—and staff responsible for patient safety and risk management.
AORN to Change Recommendations in Heated Bouffant Hat vs. Skull Cap Debate
Over the past couple of years, AORN, while still claiming all ears needed to be covered in the OR, has insisted it never explicitly declared that skull caps should be banned. Then a new study last fall hit bouffant-backers with an uppercut and pushed AORN to reconsider its stance on headwear.
International Graduates Will Help Fill the Gap With U.S. Physician Shortages
With the U.S. healthcare system already feeling the effects of the shortage, some estimates say that the country needs 14,000 new doctors to enter the workforce in order to rid the country of primary care shortages in rural and urban environments.
Q&A: Adventist Health Attempts to Transform Patient Safety With Organizationwide Changes
Dr. Hoda Asmar is senior vice president and chief clinical officer for Roseville, California–based Adventist Health, a faith-based, nonprofit integrated health system serving more than 75 communities in California, Hawaii, and Oregon.
Improving Language Access for Limited-English-Proficient, Deaf, and Hard-of-Hearing Patients
Several hospital systems and long-term care facilities across the country have started to implement electronic interpreter systems, called video remote interpreting devices, in their health centers.
Digging Into the Patient Safety Risks From Hospital Mergers
The study’s authors found that after system expansions, healthcare institutions may experience significant changes in patient populations, including increases in general volume and in patients with demographic characteristics or conditions that a given facility might not have previously served.