In 2005, the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System received a report of a near miss that brought up a new issue in the nursing field. It involved a nurse who worked in two hospital facilities; one facility used yellow wristbands for limb restrictions (do not use this limb) and the other facility used them to indicate DNR (do not resuscitate). This nurse had a patient with arm restrictions. So, well-intentioned, she placed a yellow wristband on the patient’s arm.

First Databank (FDB), the leading provider of clinical drug knowledge that improves medication-related decisions and patient outcomes, has announced that FDB AlertSpace, a web-based solution for drug knowledge alert management in CPOE systems, will be made available to Siemens Soarian Clinicals customers and Siemens Pharmacy in-house computing option (ICO) users.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a proposed rule to require manufacturers of antibacterial hand soaps and body washes to demonstrate that their products are safe for long-term daily use and more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of certain infections. Under the proposal, if companies do not demonstrate such safety and effectiveness, these products would need to be reformulated or relabeled to remain on the market.

To shed light on the availability of information for consumers on the quality of their doctors, a new scorecard finds the vast majority of states get a failing grade – D or F. Developed by the non-profit Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute (HCI³), the State Report Card on Transparency of Physician Quality Information found that only two states received an A – Minnesota and Washington – and one state, California, got a C.

CommonWell Health Alliance (the “Alliance”) – the health information technology (HIT) vendor-led interoperability effort – has announced that Chicago, Illinois; Elkin and Henderson, North Carolina; and Columbia, South Carolina have been selected as participating regions for its first rollout of CommonWell’s interoperability services. Additional provider sites and geographies will be announced in the coming months.

The Joint Commission recently released an “R3 Report” for the new National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) that requires accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals to improve the safety of their clinical alarm systems. “R3 Report” provides accredited healthcare organizations and interested healthcare professionals in-depth information about the rationale and references that were employed in the development of the new alarm NPSG.

The Joint Commission has issued a Sentinel Event Alert urging hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to take a new look at how to avoid mistakenly leaving items such as sponges, towels, and instruments in a patient’s body after surgery.

The constant beeping of alarms and an overabundance of information transmitted by medical devices such as ventilators, blood pressure monitors and ECG (electrocardiogram) machines is creating “alarm fatigue” that puts hospital patients at serious risk, according to a Sentinel Event Alert issued by The Joint Commission.

Providing higher Medicare payment rates to hospitals and clinicians in regions of the country characterized by good health outcomes and relatively lower spending and decreasing payment rates in regions with overall lesser quality and higher spending would not give providers the incentive to deliver care more efficiently, according to an Institute of Medicine committee studying the issue.