Sentinel Events for First Half of 2020 Drop Slightly
As in 2019, care management problems led the list of sentinel events. That same year, ,TJC grouped different categories together. The care management category,. including falls, delays in treatment and medication management errors.
PSQH: The Podcast Episode 9 – Using Care Coordination to Improve Quality
On episode 9 of PSQH: The Podcast, host Jay Kumar talks to Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical, about care coordination and quality improvement.
FGI Seeks Public Comment on 2020 Update to Guidelines for Design and Construction
The guidelines got their start more than 70 years ago as a federal-private venture to set building standards for the nation’s hospitals being built across the continent under the post-World War II Hill-Burton program. Publishing of the guidelines is now administered under the American Society for Healthcare Engineering.
How to Improve Emergency Preparedness for Pandemics
In the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals in New York City struggled mightily to cope with an epic surge of coronavirus patients. Across the country, the pandemic has strained supply chains for critically important materials and equipment such as personal protective equipment and ventilators.
Combine Surgery Checklists to Boost Patient Safety and Clinical Outcomes
Patient safety has been a pressing issue in healthcare since 1999, with the publication of the landmark report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Despite two decades of attention, estimates of annual patient deaths due to medical errors have risen steadily to as many as 440,000 lives, a figure that was reported in the Journal of Patient Safety in 2013.
Test Sites Quickly Attract Thousands for COVID-19 Vaccine Study
During the next two months, vaccine makers hope to recruit 60,000 Americans to roll up their sleeves to test the two vaccines, one made by Pfizer and BioNTech, a German company, and the other by biotech startup Moderna. While small tests earlier this year showed the preventives were safe and led to participants developing antibodies against the virus, the final phase 3 testing is designed to prove whether the vaccine reduces the risk of infection.
Healthcare Workers of Color Nearly Twice as Likely as Whites to Get COVID-19
The study findings follow other research showing that minority healthcare workers are likely to care for minority patients in their own communities, often in facilities with fewer resources. Those workers may also see a higher share of sick patients, as federal data shows minority patients were disproportionately testing positive and being hospitalized with the virus, said Dr. Utibe Essien, a physician and core investigator for the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion in the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System.
Coronavirus: Providing Respiratory Therapy on Frontline of the Pandemic
Respiratory therapists have been in short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study published in 2015 identified the supply of ventilators and the staff to manage them as a weak point in the U.S. healthcare sector’s capability to function effectively during a public health crisis.
Smart Beds Show Promise for COVID Patients
This Q&A resulted from a conversation PSQH had with Nancy Riffel, MSA, BSN, RN, the patient services manager for Covenant HealthCare, a 643-bed hospital in Saginaw, Michigan, that is the largest healthcare provider in the Great Lakes Bay Region.
The Importance of Sustaining Quality Initiatives in Times of Crisis
Some of the quality measures driving the VBP calculations and determining reimbursement payments are hospital-acquired infection rates, patient experience scores, readmissions, mortality and complication rates, and efficiency. Although CMS’ actions reduced the burden on hospitals by offering a suspension of reporting while lessening the impact of the VBP program, this did not lessen the expectation for hospitals to provide quality care.