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.
Alternatives to Lifting Patients
According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) statistics, worker injuries from slips, trips, and falls are one of the agency’s biggest concerns, especially in hospitals. Injury and illness rates in healthcare, at 5.2 cases for every 100 workers, continue to be above the national average, which is 3.5 cases per 100.
Smart Pump Custom Concentrations Without Hard ‘Low Concentration’ Alerts Can Lead to Patient Harm
During our latest summit, we focused on optimizing use of the technology during administration of secondary and intermittent infusions, patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), epidural infusions, plain IV solutions, and perioperative/anesthesia medications; preparing for pump-electronic health record (EHR) interoperability; and library analytics.
Musings on Patient Safety, Processes, and HIT
While working on a consulting project in Chile, I connected with representatives from the Universidad Andres Bello who requested an interview to discuss my perspectives on patient safety and the role of processes and technology in delivering safe care.
Rise in Outpatient Care Leads to Rise in Community-Associated Infections
An October 2017 study in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, “Risk Factors for Community-Associated Clostridium difficile Infection in Adults: A Case-Control Study,” found that from 2011 to 2014, instances of community-associated C. diff infections in the U.S. grew from 35% of all C. diff infections to 41%.