Patients in hospitals have a right to expect that any risks associated with their care are avoided. When it comes to catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs), those expectations are not being met. Many in the infection control community believe that CRBSIs are preventable.

The U.S. healthcare system is arguably designed to care for sick people. Some have effectively argued that is should be relabeled a “sick care” system.

While healthcare information technology certainly isn’t new, today medical centers are deploying more sophisticated systems that directly impact the quality of patient care, patient satisfaction, and clinical processes more than ever before.

Blogs. They provide commentary or news on a particular subject, can serve as a personal online diary and allow readers to leave comments in an interactive format. So what do blogs have to do with healthcare and patient safety?

In the March/April issue of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, the article “Conflict Management from the Heart: A Day in the Life of a Medical Ombuds/Mediator” presented a fictional yet representative case of a medical error involving the unexpected death of a young cardiac patient.

Spurred by national attention to the tragedy of preventable medical errors, many hospitals have made improving patient safety and reducing the incidence of medical mistakes a top priority.

In his 2004 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush announced a goal of electronic medical records for all Americans by 2014.

I hope readers of the print issues of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare at least occasionally visit the magazine’s web site, www.psqh.com (where, among other things all articles are archived and freely available, without sign-in or passwords).

Conflict management comes in many forms — practitioners can be mediators, facilitators, >arbitrators, attorneys, ombuds, coaches — the field is constantly evolving.

Healthcare is evolving from a model in which the physician made almost all treatment decisions, unquestioned, and based on clinical experience, to a patient-centered model.