HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement articles from January 2005

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement archives from January 2005

Unique patient safety authority enables sharing of lessons learned: Pennsylvania PSA reports on serious events collected.
January 1, 2005... In the past two years, three Pennsylvania hospitals have won the coveted John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award, given by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. In...

Tool forms foundation of approach to pediatric PI: success with asthma highlights PI opportunities.
January 1, 2005... Anew study by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor has shown shorter, less costly, and less frequent hospital stays and, in addition, has prevented repeat hospital visits for kids with asthma. (1) The...

Collaborative effort sees improvement in LOS: simultaneous opening of clinic key to QI success.
January 1, 2005... Evergreen Healthcare in Kirkland, WA, has used a combination of collaboration with an outside consultant and a diverse in-house team to achieve dramatic reductions in lengths of stay (LOS) and readmission rates for congestive heart failure...

Survey finds hospitals lagging behind on safety: progress made on wrong-site surgeries.
January 1, 2005... The results are mixed in the first-of-its-kind survey of hospital safety practices conducted by The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, DC-based organization founded to promote improvement in health care safety. The Leapfrog Hospital Quality and...

Tailored anesthesia aids safety post-surgery: longer-term outcomes also may be improved.
January 1, 2005... Tailored doses of anesthesia can improve the safety and quality of patient care dramatically during and immediately after surgery, and may even reduce postoperative mortality rates in the longer term, report physicians from the Medical College...

Strides made in patient safety, experts say.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Experts participating in a recent panel discussion of progress in patient safety since the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) landmark 1999 report on medical errors, To Err is Human, said significant strides have been made in the five years since...

Survey helps measure hospitals' safety culture.
January 1, 2005... Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has unveiled a new tool to help hospitals and health systems evaluate employee attitudes about patient safety in their facilities or within specific units. The Hospital Survey on Patient...

NDEP publishes two evidence-based guides.(National Diabetes Education Program)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... The Bethesda, MD-based National Diabetes Education Program has published two evidence-based guides for health care to help providers and patients with diabetes and pre-diabetes. Guiding Principles for Diabetes Care helps providers identify...

Nursing informatics groups form alliance.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Eighteen organizations representing nurses who work in nursing information technology have formed the Alliance for Nursing Informatics, which will collaborate on public policy and standards activities and the dissemination of best practices....

Teaching/learning packets engender culture change: initiative involved nurses, physicians, therapists.
January 1, 2005... The team of safety and education professionals UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) in McKeesport, PA, has taken a pre-existing vehicle--teaching/learning packets--used successfully by the nursing staff and adapted it to an...