View From the Hill – 2005: Another Key Year to Promote Quality Healthcare
As the new calendar year started, the 109th Congress came roaring into town, and President Bush was inaugurated into office for a second term. Then for the second time ever, the president promoted improving healthcare in his 2005 State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress.
Proceedings from the Quality Colloquium: Evidence-Based Medicine and Long-Term Care
Pennsylvania, which has the third largest senior population in the United States, is in a unique position to lead in setting the standard of long-term care quality.
Ethics Toolbox: From Toothless Barking to Problem Solving
While we all purport to value ethics, the real value of ethics is unclear to many. Few perceive ethics as a valuable problem-solving resource. Yet, while ethics is touted as among the most serious and important of issues, it has good bark but little bite.
Editor’s Notebook: The “Oops Center” and Patient Safety
First, I want to say that the most important learning about patient safety is that systems — not individuals — cause errors and injuries.
Disease Management: Defining Patient Safety
The Disease Management Association of America (DMAA) is a nonprofit, voluntary membership organization, founded to represent all stakeholders in the disease management (DM) community.
Consumers as Partners: Measured Impatience
We start this column by thanking the publisher and editor of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) for its splendid coverage of innovation and action in the field of patient safety.
100K Lives: IHI Campaign to Save Lives Attracts Strong Support
In December 2004, Don Berwick, MD, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), launched a national campaign to save 100,000 lives by June 14, 2006.
VLEHR: Virtual Longitudinal Electronic Health Records – An Approach to Quality Improvement
Previous contributions to the idea of an electronic health record (EHR) have set the healthcare industry on the right path, and many companies are beginning to adopt these solutions.
Viewpoint: Telehealth Programs — Introducing the Basics
In just one year, 81-year-old Dorothy was hospitalized 13 times for problems related to congestive heart failure (CHF). After participating in a telehealth program for 34 months, Dorothy’s health status improved significantly, and she had no CHF-related hospitalizations.
Technology & Quality: Usable Evidence-Based Guidelines… for Real
For more than two decades, clinicians struggled to use evidence-based guidelines. Ever since Wennberg’s work back in the 1970s demonstrating the huge practice variation seen even in relatively small geographic areas,…