Hospital’s ASTEC Center Improves Patient Safety, Ensures Critical OR Skills Using Qstream Platform
Inova Fairfax Medical Center (IFMC) in Virginia and its newly opened Advanced Surgical Technology and Education Center (ASTEC) are using Qstream’s mobile, game-based platform to drive improved patient safety and clinical knowledge among an interdisciplinary operating room (OR) team.
Way-Paver Awards for Bedside Barcoding Presented at unSUMMIT
Since its inception in 2006, The Way-Paver Award for Bedside Barcoding has acknowledged the exceptional contributions of individuals and organizations who have helped clear the path and pave the way to safer patient care by applying bar-code technology in healthcare.
PDI Prevantics Skin Antiseptics Proven to Help Facilities Reduce CLABSI Rates, Costs
PDI, maker of infection prevention products and solutions, continues to reinforce the importance of a complete infection prevention program for skin antisepsis.
What I’m Reading Now
First, I must disclose a conflict of interest: I am co-author of one chapter in this edited collection, and the editor, Lorri Zipperer, is a close friend and colleague. I was pre-disposed to like this book, and as I spend more time with the other chapters, my respect for Lorri’s vision and the resulting text continues to grow.
AACR Issues Policy Statement Underscoring Importance of Safe, Accurate, Effective Diagnostic Tests
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently issued a policy statement that underscores the importance of safe, accurate, and effective diagnostic tests by recommending that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) begin to actively exert its authority to regulate high-risk laboratory developed tests (LDTs) that are being utilized by physicians to make treatment decisions, including the tailoring of an individual’s cancer treatment regimen.
Xerox Introduces Comprehensive Healthcare Management and Analytics Platform
An advanced healthcare analytics and workflow software package, the Juvo Care Performance Platform is being launched by Midas+, A Xerox Company, to collect and analyze today’s massive amount of patient-care data and deliver detailed recommendations for better healthcare.
Joint Commission Alerts Organizations to Tubing Misconnection Risks
The Joint Commission has issued a new Sentinel Event Alert that addresses the risks of accidental medical tubing misconnections that can cause severe patient injury or death.
News – IOM Recommends Long-Term Restructuring of GME Financing and Governance
An Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee has studied the system for governance and public funding of graduate medical education (GME) and finds that it suffers from a “striking absence of transparency and accountability” (IOM, 2014, p. S-13) and provides a physician workforce that is out of sync with the nation’s current needs.
Looking to the Future of Patient Safety
Lionheart Publishing launched the first issue of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) in August 2004. Earlier that year, Pennsylvania implemented the first statewide mandatory reporting system (“Pennsylvania Is First State,” 2004); President George Bush pledged to make electronic health records available to most patients by 2014 (White House, n.d.), and Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook (Facebook, 2014).
Editor’s Notebook: Ten Years of PSQH
Ten years, 60 to-press deadlines, more than 240 feature articles, at least that many columns—thinking about how much material we’ve published in 10 years gives me pause, and that’s only in print.