Eliminating medication errors has been a priority for hospitals since the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released To Err Is Human.

On November 21, 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released final regulations to implement the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA, or the Act).

Indiana newborns are mistakenly given adult doses of Heparin. A 33-year-old New York woman undergoes a double mastectomy intended for someone else. A 67-year-old California man dies when he receives blood meant for another patient.

In the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG), The Joint Commission (TJC) has emphasized the need to reduce the risk of patient injuries from falls due to their high prevalence and associated adverse outcomes in at-risk patient populations.

Evidence linking sleep deprivation to a higher risk of medical errors prompted limits in 2003 on the hours per week that medical residents could work at U.S. hospitals.

Is your profile complete on LinkedIn? How many friends do you have on Facebook? Did you update your “What are you working on” at both sites?

It will be some time before we know if President Obama’s Stimulus Plan revives the economy, but there’s no doubt it has stimulated debate about health IT in general and electronic health records in particular.March / April 2009.

If you ask any healthcare provider about the most effective ways to improve patient safety, it’s highly unlikely that you would hear him or her say, “I’d like to know less about my patients before I treat them.”

Although physicians pledge to “first do no harm,” in practice, adverse events in hospitals are common and frequently preventable. In fact, Bartlett et al. (2008) found that up to 50% of adverse events in hospitals are preventable.

Clinicians and healthcare organizations recognize that the safety and quality of care is improved by recording and updating a complete list of medications and supplements for every patient at admission, during transfers while in the hospital, and at discharge.