Q&A: Imaging Technology and Making Safety and Quality a Priority in C-suite Agendas
In this Q&A, Austin O’Connell of Philips Healthcare discusses the newest imaging technology, as well as how hospitals create a value proposition for safety and quality that resonates on the floor of the radiology department and in the boardroom.
Improve Patient Mobility in Five Easy Steps
To address this issue and ensure patients were getting the ambulation they needed to achieve optimal outcomes, the hospital revamped its mobility program, including creation of a designated mobility team.
Online Tool Evaluates the Healthcare Team’s Work Environment
A new study finds the tool has applications beyond critical-care, and is effective for assessing the health of the work environment for interprofessional patient care teams throughout a hospital’s patient care settings.
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%.
How Nurses Can Prevent Social Media Mishaps
Reviewing hospital policies with their staff is one step nurse leaders can take to help prevent these types of incidents.
RAND Urges More Patient Input in Hospital Rankings
Hospitals closely watch their rankings on sites like CMS’s Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings System, available on Hospital Compare, because they can have significant impact on consumer choices and even reimbursement levels.