The effective transfer of patient care information is essential to a patient’s continuity of care whether conveyed in written documents, verbally, or electronically. Ineffective communication and transfer of patient information has been associated with medical errors, patient harm, and patient dissatisfaction.

Two articles in this issue are part of an ongoing series about interprofessional and multidisciplinary education in healthcare. Most authors are members of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Open School community (www.ihi.org/openschool), which offers alternative learning opportunities, and online training in quality improvement and patient safety.

As a medical student rotating through outpatient clinics and hospitals in Ohio in 2008, I felt underwhelmed by the initial experience. In both settings, I witnessed employees working incredibly hard with little interdepartmental communication—even when taking care of the same patients.

Have you noticed anything different about Dr. Blott recently? It used to be that when he came to make rounds, he was friendly and willing to help out, but now he seems aloof and barely makes eye contact. When I call him about a patient, he acts like I am bothering him, and he’s very abrupt and insensitive.

Concern for the safety of health information technology (HIT) is long-standing, and recent reports have catapulted HIT safety to prominence.

In April 2014, students from Wright State University (WSU)’s Boonshoft School of Medicine and College of Nursing and Health teamed up with pharmacy students from Cedarville University—all based in Ohio—to participate in an extracurricular activity they hoped would herald a new approach to their combined curriculums.

The Liberty QualityCare Client Satisfaction Survey is designed to provide an annual measurement of outcomes for a national, private, physician-owned corporation established in 1986. Liberty Healthcare Corporation provides healthcare management and staffing for acute care behavioral health, mental health, dual diagnosis with intellectual/developmental disabilities, correctional mental health, and primary care settings.

Fluoroscopy is a powerful tool that has been used over the past century in many medical disciplines. If asked, ”What is an X-ray?” many patients would say it is like a photograph—a picture of a body taken at a moment in time. Following this analogy, if a conventional X-ray is similar to a photograph, fluoroscopy is like a video.

When the Buick plant in Flint, Michigan, demonstrated in 1969 that automatic identification could be done with laser-based barcode readers even on a moving assembly line, many industries took notice. Unfortunately, healthcare wasn’t one of them.

Many states and communities are forming health information exchanges (HIE) to promote greater care coordination and collaboration across healthcare settings. Most of these repositories capture traditional clinical data, pulling from hospital and physician practice records, but behavioral health data is conspicuously absent.