The Institute of Medicine sent waves racing across the surface of American healthcare when it published To Err Is Human in 1999. The unsettling report suggested medical errors were killing at least 44,000 and as many as 98,000 patients nationwide each year. Even the lower end of that spectrum...
Editor’s note: In March, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) announced that they would merge starting May 1. The two organizations have been leaders in the patient safety field for years, and there is much hope...
A look at the Automated All Cause Harm trigger system
The prevention of avoidable harms has been a goal of healthcare since day one, but it was given fresh life in 2010 when the Office of Inspector General (OIG) urged that healthcare facilities report...
At the end of March, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced its third global safety initiative, the Global Patient Safety Challenge on Medication Safety, which calls on facilities to cut the rate of medication-related errors in half by 2022. The organization hopes to do this by:...
Editor’s note: By the time the general public hears about an impaired clinician, whether it’s a nurse, technician, or physician, it’s usually after something bad has already happened. The infamous case of a New Hampshire technician who stole painkiller syringes and exposed thousands of...
To say readmissions are a big deal in medicine is a massive understatement. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) was enacted in 2010 specifically to take on this problem and has imposed nearly $1 billion in penalties. An estimated $17 billion in Medicare spending is spent annually...
