First Databank Acquires Medication Reconciliation Solution Leader Design Clinicals
First Databank (FDB), the leading provider of clinical drug knowledge that helps improve medication-related decisions and patient outcomes, has announced that an affiliate of FDB has acquired Design Clinicals, Inc., a healthcare information technology company dedicated to providing clinician-friendly solutions for improving medication reconciliation and the delivery of patient care. Design Clinicals, based in Seattle, Washington, began operations in 2005, is led by founder and CEO Dewey Howell, MD, PhD, a practicing family physician turned healthcare information technology software developer.
Prevention of Needlestick Injuries Can Save U.S Healthcare System More than $1 Billion a Year
Needlestick and sharps injuries affect more than half a million healthcare personnel every year, creating over $1 billion in preventable healthcare costs every year and an immeasurable emotional toll on millions of healthcare personnel, according to a Safe in Common review of U.S. healthcare industry statistics.
NPSF Awards Research Grant for Project Investigating Environmental Factors Involved in Patient Falls
The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has awarded a $100,000 grant for an innovative patient safety research project that will examine the mechanisms underlying patient falls in the hospital and formulate recommendations for improved facility design.
ABQAURP News
Using Six Sigma to Improve Patient Safety in the Perioperative Process
Using Six Sigma to Improve Patient Safety in the Perioperative Process
In this project, the Six Sigma methodology was utilized to improve patient safety and compliance to the Time Out protocol and certain Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) measures. The project took place in the perioperative service at Huntington Hospital, in Huntington, New York. Six Sigma is an improvement science that utilizes a structured approach known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) and a series of improvement tools in order to identify sources of variation and to develop improvement strategies that would lead to the reduction of opportunities for defects and variation in a process or system.
National Coordinator Mostashari Announces Resignation
Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, announced on August 8 that he will step down from his position as national coordinator for health information technology in the fall. Mostashari first joined the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) as deputy for programs and policy in 2009 and succeeded David Blumenthal, MD, as national coordinator in April 2011. Although the previous national coordinators have also served approximately two years in the position, Mostashari’s announcement caught the health IT community by surprise and prompted many accolades for his national leadership for health IT and its role in patient safety and quality improvement.
Health IT & Quality: The Health Supply Chain
Health IT & Quality
The Health Supply Chain
The shift to value-based reimbursement from volume-based reimbursement puts great pressure on organizations to obtain a detailed understanding of how they deliver care and what resources they use. Without a deep understanding of these issues, providers are unable to effectively manage care delivery and survive an environment of declining reimbursement.
ISMP: Patient-Controlled Analgesia
ISMP
Patient-Controlled Analgesia
Fatal PCA adverse events continue to happen… Better patient monitoring is essential to prevent harm.
With this issue, Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) reaches its fifth anniversary, which prompts me to take a moment and think about how much the world has changed and stayed the same in the past five years. When we published the first issue, in July 2004, the patient safety community was discussing how much progress—if any—had been made since the IOM published To Err Is Human five years earlier, and now we are assessing progress made over the past 10 years.
Massachusetts General Hospital’s Addition to Patient Safety Platform Guides Performance of Safe Surgery Checklist
LiveData, Inc., leader in real-time integration and display technology, has announced that Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has expanded its deployment of LiveData OR-Dashboard™, adding the revolutionary Active Time Out® (ATO) patient safety technology to automate their Safe Surgery Checklists.
CRG Medical Releases KBCore Purple Button Application on MioCARE Android Tablet for Healthcare
CRG Medical, Inc., developers of web-based healthcare applications, has released its KBCore™ Common Formats “Purple Button” Patient Safety interoperability application on the MioCARE A105 Android Tablet for Healthcare.