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If you have tried looking for specific information on the National Quality Forum (NQF) website and been flummoxed by too many or too few query responses, you might want to check out the new Field Guide to NQF Resources.
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The American Medical Association's Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement and The Joint Commission have come up with ways to reduce five commonly overused treatments use of antibiotics for viral infections like colds, over-transfusion of red blood cells, placing tubes in ears for middle ear infusion, early elective delivery, and elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
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Late in 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report outlining the potential benefits of health information technology, as well as the potential perils associated with it. "Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care" included specific recommendations, including that the government should find an independent organization to determine what use of technology could potentially harm patients and how to prevent those scenarios.
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Hospitals are barely keeping up with the last round of changes in healthcare, but already there are people calling for another overhaul.
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The Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET), an affiliate of the American Hospital Association (AHA), has created a series of checklists as part of the Partnership for Patients (PfP) campaign of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that, if implemented, might help reduce patient harm by 40% and unplanned hospital readmission rates by up to 20%.
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It is well known that healthcare organizations have access to a vast amount of data, and that a lot is unused and more is of little use. But what can be done about it? A June workshop at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) called Counting What Counts came to some conclusions and may mark the start of a new initiative to streamline data collection and make better use of what is collected.
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If you read it in a peer reviewed journal, it must be right right? And if there is an evidence-based practice, then the evidence must be stellar. Not so fast, says Lisa Spruce, DNP, RN, ACNS, ACNP, ANP, CNOR, director of evidence-based perioperative practice at the Association of periOPerative Registered Nurses (AORN) in Denver. Spruce is a big advocate of healthcare stakeholders becoming critical readers and understanding exactly what kind of data makes for good evidence. Doing so can make anyone better at determining what practices to mimic or adapt to local needs, and what can just be ignored.
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The broad misconception that infectious diseases were fading as a medical concern with the development of antibiotics and vaccines was dashed in dramatic and tragic fashion in 1981 when the first cases of a strange new illness were reported among groups of gay men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The AIDS epidemic had begun.
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Checklists and clear protocols for clinical care have been highly successful in infection prevention and other fields, but can be easily undercut by a simple non-action: silence.
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Checklists are often touted as the potential cure for the ill that is patient harm. If it works for the aerospace industry, why can't it work for healthcare? Indeed, there is ample evidence that some checklists can make a big difference in patient safety.
