Cardinal Health Foundation Provides $1.1 Million in Grant Funding to Improve Patient Safety
The Cardinal Health Foundation has announced 42 grants, totaling nearly $1.1 million, to help U.S. hospitals, health systems and community health organizations improve the effectiveness, efficiency and excellence of patient care.
PSO Services Group Launches National Medical Safety Board
The PSO Services Group, LLC, a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) AHRQ listed National Patient Safety Organization (PSO), has launched a multi-disciplinary National Medical Safety Board (NMSB), designed along the lines of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Covidien Announces FDA 510(k) Clearance of the Nellcor Bedside SpO2 Patient Monitoring System
Covidien, a leading global provider of healthcare products and recognized innovator in patient monitoring and respiratory care solutions, has been granted 510(k) clearance to market the Covidien Nellcor Bedside SpO2Patient Monitoring System by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Joint Commission Issues New Sentinel Event Alert: Safe Use of Opioids in Hospitals
Although hospital patients may need the strong pain relief that only opioids can provide, a Sentinel Event Alert issued on August 8 by The Joint Commission urges hospitals to take specific steps to prevent serious complications or even deaths from opioid use.
ABQAURP News
Outperform the Competition: Hospital Value-Based Purchasing
Outperform the Competition: Hospital Value-Based Purchasing
Competition to capture the highest incentive payments from the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program is going to be very tight. “Even if you are above the 90th percentile, you could still have a very poor score and leave money on the table,” said Tami Lewis in a recent Modern Healthcare article (McKinney, 2012).
The RTLS Patient Safety Improvement Opportunity
Technology
The RTLS Patient Safety Improvement Opportunity
The goals of any healthcare technology should be to improve healthcare quality and patient safety, contain or reduce healthcare costs, mitigate risk exposures, and enhance revenues. Relatively few technologies score high in meeting all of those objectives, but real-time location systems (RTLS) clearly do.
The Critical Importance of Good Data to Improving Quality
American College of Surgeons
The Critical Importance of Good Data to Improving Quality
The ability to fairly, accurately, and meaningfully measure—and remeasure—the quality of healthcare is a challenging prerequisite to assessing and improving it.
Simply put, you cannot demonstrably improve what you cannot measure; and to measure, you need good data—data that are fair, accurate, and robust. Good data allow you not only to assess the quality of care, but also to measure the effect of the quality improvement intervention. Continuous quality improvement depends on determining what improves quality and what doesn’t by using good data to continually assess and reassess healthcare quality.
Patient-Centered Workflow
Health IT & Quality
Patient-Centered Workflow
In the design of successful healthcare information technology implementations, patients matter. Although the importance of addressing the workflow needs of clinicians cannot be overstated, focusing on patient needs helps ensure newly designed workflows leverage the full capabilities of information technology tools. In addition, this delivers the clinical and financial outcomes desired by organizations.
The IT/Clinical Engineering Governance Gap
The IT/Clinical Engineering Governance Gap
Is your organization ready to support safety-critical systems?
With certain patient safety issues, the “system” is responsible for the root cause of a problem rather than the actions of those participating in the situation resulting in an adverse event. Clinical activities to which “the system” may contribute risk include patient handoffs between clinicians, medication administration, diagnosis of disease, and many others.