Rick Boothman has been thinking about when he knew that the University of Michigan Health System, where he is executive director of clinical safety, had reached the “point of no return” about openly discussing preventable harm with patients. In his keynote to the MITSS Annual Dinner in November, Boothman explained that he had been struck by something he heard during a meeting in Washington, which led him to reflect on Michigan’s commitment to this approach.

U.S. News & World Reports will increase the importance of patient safety in the methodology it uses to score hospitals for the publication’s annual Best Hospitals list. At the same time, the weight given to “reputation” in the scoring will decrease.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) invites applications for funding to support the creation of “patient safety learning laboratories,” described by AHRQ as “places and professional networks where interrelated threats to patient safety can be identified, where multidisciplinary teams generate new ways of thinking with respect to the threats, and where environments are established conducive to brainstorming and rapid prototyping techniques that stimulate further thinking.”

Entries are now being accepted for the 2014 Young Physicians Patient Safety Award, The Doctors Company Foundation announced. Medical students and residents are eligible to compete for six $5,000 awards. Winners will also receive travel to the Association of American Medical College’s Integrating Quality meeting in Chicago June 12–13, 2014, where the awards will be presented.

By David Crist

There are a number of issues and trends impacting the healthcare industry that should be of particular note for home health providers as the push to provide better care to more individuals continues.

By Susan Carr

Diane Shannon, MD, stopped practicing medicine 17 years ago and recently wrote a blog post to describe her feelings about being a doctor, her daily experience as an internist, and her decision to focus instead on medical writing.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry, has announced availability of professional development eCourses for nurses that were developed in collaboration with Joint Commission Resources (JCR), official publisher and educator of The Joint Commission.

LiveData, Inc. has announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare Facility in Miami is installing LiveData PeriOp Manager, the company’s operational intelligence solution for healthcare, throughout its full perioperative environment.

The Cardinal Health Foundation is currently accepting applications for grant funding to help U.S., Canadian and Puerto Rican hospitals, health systems, community health clinics and other non-profit health care institutions improve the efficiency and quality of patient care.