If we have known that hand hygiene was necessary for patient safety and wellbeing since the 1860s, why has it taken so long to instill the habit of washing before and after treating a patient? Perhaps, as Adam McMullin, vice president and general manager, Hill-Rom IT Solutions, says, “Hand hygiene has been an established practice that unfortunately just didn’t catch on for the first 50 years because a gentleman’s hands were always clean.” And, of course, all doctors are gentlemen. Or were, for the most part, in the 1800s, at least.

Automated alerts can provide an effective means of communicating essential information about drugs and patients to clinicians who prescribe, dispense, and administer medications. Alerts are typically communicated through warning messages that pop up on a screen and can cause either a soft or hard stop. A soft stop provides information to the clinician about a potential drug safety or efficacy problem and may offer alternative suggestions for the clinician to consider.

The topic of population health often comes up in conversations about healthcare quality as organizations aim to leverage information about their patient populations to improve the quality of care they provide. However, a focus on population health goes beyond just improving quality—at its core, population health management enhances the fundamental safety of patient care.

During the dot-com boom, many new companies based their business plans upon the volume of website visits. The revenue models assumed that by capturing the attention of users as measured by clicks on the company website, the organizations would generate wild profits through…something. Companies offered free products and services claiming that these Internet visits would deliver market share and revenue. In fact, many of these companies never thought through their business models nor understood their real costs.