HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement articles from November 2007

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement archives from November 2007

The Leapfrog Group: HAI prevention efforts still have a long way to go: 87% of hospitals surveyed do not yet meet its standards.
November 1, 2007... In a stark reminder of just how far some hospitals have to go in improving patient safety, The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, DC-based patient safety organization, reports that 87% of the 1,256 hospitals that participated in its annual Hospital...

Disaster brings new meaning to safety, quality: staff members perform non-medical services.
November 1, 2007... The recent flooding in America's heartland made lots of headlines, but in the health care facilities of the region much was going on behind the scenes that the public never got to see. And, despite having run disaster drills during the year,...

Abbreviations formally linked to medication errors: if anything, numbers probably understate the problem.(Clinical report)
November 1, 2007... In one of the first formal studies linking the use of abbreviations to medication errors, researchers reporting their findings in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety state that 4.7% of the 643,151 errors reported to the...

Study: temporary nurses not a threat to quality: negative perceptions unfounded.
November 1, 2007... Contrary to popular belief, negative perceptions of temporary nurses may be unfounded, say the authors of a new study in the Journal of Nursing Administration. (1) In fact, they argue, temporary nurses have qualifications similar to those of...

Hospitals still lag in developing safe practices: proactive processes are needed.
November 1, 2007... While hospitals are doing will in complying with a number of the National Quality Forum's (NQF) guidelines of 30 safe practices, there are some areas in which significant improvement is still needed, according to new research from the Emory...