News Archive - Page 275 of 351 - Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare

Patient Safety

Engaging Patients and Families in Root Cause Analysis of Sentinel Healthcare Events: The Story of Justin Micalizzi

May 16, 2012 ‐ Patton McGinley

By Susan Carr

Working with two patient advocates, the Reliability Center has released a webcast that analyzes the sudden, unexpected death in January 2001 of 11-year-old Justin Micalizzi immediately following surgery for an infected ankle. For 10 years, the Micalizzi family—especially his mother, Dale, now a well known patient safety advocate—sought unsuccessfully and without the cooperation of the hospital to discover what caused Justin’s death or at least to elicit a clear and honest pledge that the hospital would commit sincerely to understanding what had happened.

Technology

Ekahau Launches Next Generation Wi-Fi RTLS Staff Badge and Pager

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

Ekahau Inc. announced the May 8 launch of its newest Wi-Fi staff badge.

Patient Safety

Northeast Georgia Physicians Group Chooses Phytel to Enhance Its Patient-Centered Medical Home Model

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

Phytel, the leader in automated physician-led population health improvement, recently announced that Northeast Georgia Physicians Group has selected Phytel and its Atmosphere platform to help transform all of its 30-plus ambulatory-care clinics into patient-centered medical homes by the end of the year.

Technology

UC Irvine Medical Center Selects iSirona for Medical Device Integration

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

iSirona, a provider of simplified solutions for medical device integration, announced on May 8 that UC Irvine Medical Center will be implementing iSirona’s device connectivity solution throughout its campus.

Patient Safety

HMS Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

Established by the academic teaching institutions and Harvard Medical School (HMS), the HMS Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality is proud to present its first four recipients representing the Class of 2012.

Patient Safety

NPSF Awards Research Grants for Patient Safety Projects

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) announced on May 9 that it has awarded a total of $200,000 in grants for two innovative patient safety research projects. The grants are awarded through the NPSF Research Grants Program, which promotes studies leading to the prevention of human errors, system errors, patient injuries, and their consequences.

Technology

I-PASS: Standardizing Patient “Handoffs” to Reduce Medical Errors

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

A new patient safety and medical education initiative, standardizing and improving how patient care is “handed off” during hospital shift changes, can reduce medical errors by as much as 40 percent, report physicians at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Boston.

Patient Safety

Psych Patients Need Patience in the ER, Average Wait 11 Hours

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

Patients having psychiatric emergencies wait 11.5 hours in the emergency department, and those who are older, uninsured or intoxicated wait even longer, according to a study published online recently in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“Patient and Practice-Related Determinants of Emergency Department Length of Stay for Patients with Psychiatric Illness”).

Accreditation & Regulation

ANA and AONE Release Joint Principles of Collaboration

May 15, 2012 ‐ Brooke Schmidt

Communication and collaboration are critical elements of success for effective work environments, particularly in health care. When these elements break down, the result can be a cascade of negative events. Yet when collaboration is strong, it reaps positive benefits on the workplace culture and patient outcomes.

Risk Management

The Risk of Workarounds

May 3, 2012 ‐ Susan Carr

By Tim Vanderveen, PharmD, MS

In April, Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare published an article summarizing a recent webinar presented through ourCenter for Safety and Clinical Excellence. The article is titled “Smart Pump Workarounds – What’s the Legal Risk?”, and it focuses on personal accountability on the part of caregivers in safely operating Smart IV pumps.

Caregiver accountability has been a hot topic in recent months. As it relates to IV medication safety, it’s a critical issue and worth paying attention to. It’s been shown that clinicians often implement process workarounds, including not utilizing the drug library, overriding soft dose and concentration alerts, reprogramming infusions as rate in ml/hr following hard limits, and occasionally removing IV tubing from pumps and delivering medication boluses by gravity to avoid a high dose alert.