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A new online network has been launched to collect and distribute information about adverse drug events in the United States. The new service, called RxEvent, is available to all U.S. prescribers via integration into electronic health record (EHR) platforms and other online services, including directly at www.RxEvent.org.
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Communication among caregivers is always important, but never more so than in the emergency department. A collaboration among hospitals across the country and a leading malpractice insurer has produced several simple but effective ways to improve communication.
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Provider participants in the collaboration organized by Crico Strategies concluded that optimal physician-nurse communication at critical junctures in ED care are key to reducing diagnosis-related errors.
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To address the problem of increased risk to patient safety in off hours in your own facility, risk managers should first assess the risk. Study the off-hours calls to the rapid response team, cardiac arrest outcomes, sentinel events, and other incidents relative to safety and outcomes, says Carol A. Burkhart, RN, MS, ARNP, CPHRM, CHC, senior vice president with Marsh/Clinical Healthcare Consulting in Chicago.
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OK, maybe duct tape really can fix everything. A simple red roll of this prime tool in the kit of every weekend repairman led to some rather startling results for innovative infection preventionists.
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For most organizations, health information technology (HIT) is a tool to be used in quality improvement projects, not the end in and of itself. But the future promises to be different: a time when HIT can be the end of the QI process, the improvement personified.
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A new program announced in July by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) aims to help states improve quality of care and share in any cost savings through improved coordination.
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It has long been argued that either you can't make a difference in patients' glucose levels during an inpatient stay, or it didn't make much difference in the long term if you did.
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What happens when you get 122 hospitals to band together and coordinate care for heart attack patients? You save lives, even in small rural hospitals that might not be expected to perform as well as their urban counterparts.
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The National Quality Forum (NQF) added four new items to its list of serious reportable events and updated another 25.
