Saving Blood: The Relatively Simple Task of Blood Management
RBC transfusion have increased 134% between 1997 to 2011 to become the most frequently performed hospitals procedure in America. And while they are a vital tool for treating patients, they come with potential risks like allergic reactions, fever, and infection.
Preventing Patient Identification Errors
Before organizations can find solutions to patient identification errors, a root cause analysis based on past misidentifications should be conducted.
Las Vegas Faced a Massacre. Did It Have Enough Trauma Centers?
What matters most is not the number of high-level centers, but the degrees of coordination across the area’s medical network, including the first responders.
Clinical Trials, Genetic Testing, and Personalized Medicine
As medicine marches toward its embrace of personalized medicine and immunotherapy, researchers struggle to obtain meaningful discoveries that can be applied to the ever-expanding number of patient cohorts.
Extra Attention to High Risk Patients Saves Money, Improves Outcomes
A California physician network is reducing utilization by providing special attention to patients most at risk for readmission after hospitalization.
A Call for Standards, Auditing of Hospital Quality Data
Quality data looks good in ads and on hospital and health system websites. A little too good at times.
How to Prevent Maternal Mortality
This article appears in the September 2017 issue of Patient Safety Monitory Journal. More women are dying during pregnancy and childbirth than 15 years ago Maternal mortality is a measure of how many mothers die from pregnancy-related complications while carrying or within 42 days after birth. And in most of the developed world, this number … Continued
Some HIPAA Requirements Waived For Hospitals Affected By Hurricane Harvey
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana were granted an emergency reprieve from certain limited HIPAA requirements, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced in an August 30 email alert. The agency also published a bulletin August 29.
What Exactly is a ‘High-Performing’ Health System?
A review by The Joint Commission finds broad and inconsistent uses for the term and definitions that are all over the map, hindering effective measures for the concept.
Bringing Innovation To Your Facility
In healthcare, some of the best innovations are deciding what not to do—especially when the current practice has no evidence basis.