Suicide Prevention Outside the Psychiatry Department: A Bundled Approach

By Susan Bumgarner, BSN, MSN and Van Haygood, BSN, MS

With the advent of The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) and the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err Is Human
(IOM, 2000), patient safety has returned to the forefront in
healthcare. Meanwhile, across the nation, the network of inpatient
psychiatric facilities is shrinking. The number of persons struggling
with mental health conditions, however, is not, and their demands on
the acute healthcare system are growing.

IT Integration in the OR

By Mitch Work, MPA, FHIMSS

Faced with increasing demands from the public and private purchasers
and payers of healthcare, clinician and administrative leaders in
hospital organizations are moving forward to address issues of
operational efficiency, clinician workflow, patient safety, and care
quality.

Perspective

Enforceable Regulations for Patient Safety

By Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err Is Human (2000),
recommended a national goal of reducing medical errors by 50% within 5
years. To say that we haven’t met this goal would be an understatement.
In its latest National Healthcare Quality Report, the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) asserts that, “measures of
patient safety … indicate not only a lack of improvement but also, in
fact, a decline of almost 1 percent in this area.”