The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has announced its 16^th Annual Cheers Awards winners. The annual awards dinner will be held on December 10, 2013, at the Cuba Libre restaurant in Orlando.

Saint Luke’s Health System (SLHS), one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the Midwest, has signed an agreement to implement PeriGen’s PeriCALM^® fetal surveillance system  in its seven metro and regional birthing hospitals in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas. Celebrating 100 years of delivering babies, SLHS hospitals collectively deliver 6,000 newborns annually.

MagMutual Insurance Company, the Southeast’s foremost medical professional liability insurer, has announced the establishment of the MagMutual Patient Safety Institute. Underscoring its commitment to improving quality across care delivery settings, MagMutual’s $50 million investment offers physicians a wide range of resources and practical tools that facilitate the adoption of best practices to improve safety and decrease exposure to risk.

The cost of medical malpractice is growing at the slowest rate in the 14 year history of the Aon/ASHRM Hospital and Physician Professional Liability Benchmark report.

I-Flow, LLC, a Kimberly-Clark Health Care Company and manufacturer of the ON-Q Pain Relief System, has announced a new service for hospitals designed to reduce reliance on narcotics for post-surgical pain management and improve both the quality of care and financial outcomes.

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has announced an agreement with the American Board of Medical Specialties® (ABMS®) to bring patient safety education to physicians participating in the ABMS Program for Maintenance of Certification (ABMS MOC®).

At the opening session of the annual conference of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM), futurist Ian Morrison described current changes in the U.S. healthcare industry and how they relate to the interests of risk managers. While the Affordable Care Act is important and the obvious driver of change, Morrison is convinced that current trends—consolidation, cost reduction, and realignment of risk—will continue, independent of the federal legislation.

Quantros, the leading provider of cloud-based services for quality, safety, and clinical business intelligence solutions across the continuum of care, and athenahealth, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, has announced a first-of-its-kind arrangement between a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) and a health IT supplier, in which thousands of clinical providers and provider organizations across the U.S. will gain free access to a safe, privileged environment in which they can easily submit patient safety concerns and findings as well as share best practices to enhance safety and improve care.

By Patrick Stevenson, BS, CSSE, NCP

The topic of population health often comes up in conversations about healthcare quality as organizations aim to leverage information about their patient populations to improve the quality of care they provide. However, a focus on population health goes beyond just improving quality—at its core, population health management enhances the fundamental safety of patient care.