HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement articles from April 2003

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement archives from April 2003

Tool sites offer quick way to bolster performance improvement: knowledge sharing moves beyond organization to entire profession.(intranet networking)
April 1, 2003... If a single organization can benefit from sharing knowledge through an internal site (intranet), just imagine the possibilities when virtually the entire body of performance-improvement (PI) knowledge can be made available to any quality...

`Making it personal' improves patient care: personal histories increase patient satisfaction.
April 1, 2003... Sheila Brune, RN, BS, CPHQ, CPUR, says the quality of direct patient care is the most important predictor of patient satisfaction. In the past few years, Brune, CMC director of Utilization Management/Living History Program at Great River...

Safety concerns should not end with discharge: preventing errors after patients return home.
April 1, 2003... The transition from hospital to home is a potentially vulnerable period, and the medical community should explore ways to reduce adverse events during this transition, say the authors of a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The...

CPOE cuts time needed to deliver meds, X-rays: turnaround times are reduced by as much as 64%.(computerized physician order-entry)
April 1, 2003... A new study suggests that hospitals may be able to significantly cut the time it takes to deliver medications to patients and complete X-rays and lab tests by using computerized physician order-entry (CPOE) systems. The study, which...

New graduate standards limit residents' hours: noncompliance to carry considerable consequences.
April 1, 2003... The Chicago-based Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's (ACGME) board of directors has approved final standards on resident duty hours. The new standards, approved Feb. 11, 2003, take effect July 1, 2003. The new standards...

HospitalConnect web site gets a redesign.(health care web sites)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The Chicago-based American Hospital Association (AHA) has formally unveiled HospitalConnect, a web portal uniting 50 Internet sites from 22 organizations that serve health care providers. The prototype for HospitalConnect went live for...

AHRQ sponsors bioterror audio conferences.(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)(Calendar)
April 1, 2003... The Washington, DC-based Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, MD, is sponsoring a series of five free web-assisted audio conferences for state, local, and health system policy-makers. The goal of the audio...

HHS names new AHRQ director.(Department of Health and Human Services)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that Carolyn Clancy, MD, has been appointed director Of the department's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, MD. The agency is responsible...

Leapfrog Group to help hospitals with investments.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... A member of the steering committee of The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, DC-based patient safety organization, said the committee is developing plans to help hospitals recoup some of the money they invest in changes to meet Leapfrog...

Retained instruments: rare error or safety concern? Establish a strategy to make such errors less likely.
April 1, 2003... A paper in the Jan. 16, 2003, New England Journal of Medicine has the safety community abuzz; are too many instruments and sponges being left inside patients after surgery? The paper, widely regarded as the largest and most reliable to date...

Pfizer to bar code drugs to reduce dispensing errors: codes can be read by bar code readers.(Pfizer Inc.)
April 1, 2003... New York City-based Pharma company Pfizer, Inc. will use a new bar code technology on its hospital unit-dose products in an effort to help reduce dispensing errors at hospitals and pharmacies nationwide. The bar code system--developed in...

AHRQ unveils web-based medical journal: focus on medical errors in blame-free environment.(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
April 1, 2003... The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has launched a monthly peer-reviewed, web-based medical journal that showcases patient safety lessons drawn from actual cases of medical errors. Called AHRQ WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality...