Report Cites Health Care Integration as a National Priority for Improving Patient Safety

The Lucian Leape Institute at the National Patient Safety Foundation today released a report on care integration that highlights the issue as a national priority for improving patient safety and the efficiency of the US health care system. Order from Chaos: Accelerating Care Integration is the result of a Leape Institute Roundtable that brought together leading experts in the fields of patient safety and health system improvement.

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Eyeglasses—Low-Hanging Fruit?

At the AAMI/FDA Summit on Interoperability, a presenter mentioned a circumstance where a nurse was not able to read a smart pump display because she wasn’t wearing her glasses. I have heard similar comments in the past—always as a sidebar to a main point being made about electronic health records, medical devices, or some other information printed or displayed in a clinical environment—which leads me to wonder how often clinicians put patients at risk because their vision is faulty and uncorrected.

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Electronic Physician Documentation

As hospitals throughout the country sprint towards Meaningful Use, computerized physician order entry (CPOE), electronic medication reconciliation, ICD-9-generated diagnosis tables, nursing documentation, and bed side barcoding seem to be riding a tsunami incentivized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

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Landmark Guidelines for Optimal Quality Care of Geriatric Surgical Patients Published

New comprehensive guidelines for the pre-operative care of the nation’s elderly patients have been issued by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the American Geriatrics Society (AGS). The joint guidelines—published in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons—apply to every patient who is 65 years and older as defined by Medicare regulations.

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