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An 18-month patient safety effort by 21 hospitals in the Cincinnati, OH, region has reduced incidents of patient falls that result in injury in these hospitals by 64%, and one of the key reasons is that the hospitals did something that might have made risk managers gasp in recent years: They shared their own proprietary data about falls.
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At press time, no infants had been abducted from healthcare providers in the United States in 2013, but there are steps you can take to ensure that disaster does not strike your facility, notes prevention expert John Rabun, ASCW, director of infant abduction response for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in Alexandria, VA
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Wrong-site brain surgery left a Missouri woman unable to speak intelligibly and in need of around-the-clock care, according to a complaint filed in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in Clayton, MO.
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Risk managers routinely use a root cause analysis (RCA) to determine the true source of an adverse outcome or other event, but are your RCAs as good as they could be?
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Ambient background noise whether it is the sound of loud surgical equipment, talkative team members, or music is a patient and surgical safety factor that can affect auditory processing among surgeons and the members of their team in the operating room (OR), according to a new study.
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A fall reduction system that encourages caregivers to respond early to warning signs has been proven to significantly reduce falls, according to the manufacturer.
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The idea of full disclosure of adverse events was proposed to the risk management community years ago. Remember how controversial that idea was? Then the next suggestion was that providers should apologize for their errors. More debate ensued.
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A wrong-site surgery resulted in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed recently against SSM Health Care - St. Louis in Missouri and a neurosurgeon, and the plaintiffs attorney suggests that the cause might be a failure of the entire operative team to participate in the time-out.
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Four essential steps can help providers improve safety for patients using opioids, according to advice offered by the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS), a Chicago-based advocacy group of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, healthcare organizations, and patient safety advocacy groups.
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When risk managers try in so many ways to improve patient safety, patients family members are an often overlooked partner, says Karen Curtiss, president of PartnerHealth system based in Boston and founder of Campaign Zero Families for Patient Safety.
