Editor's Note The Joint Commission on March 14 announced that three revised requirements across the Life Safety (LS) and Environment of Care (EC) chapters went into effect March 11. The revisions are: LS.02.01.30, element of performance (EP) 13, is designed to maintain alignment with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid…

Read More

  Editor's Note The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is working with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement/National Patient Safety Foundation and sister Health and Human Services agencies to promote a wide variety of information and activities for Patient Safety Awareness Week March 11 to March 17. The annual…

Read More

Editor's Note The ECRI Institute on March 12 released its 2018 Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations. Topping the list is diagnostic errors, followed by opioid safety across the continuum of care. Eighth on the list is device cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization. The list is not representative of…

Read More

Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 28 announced the update of its sentinel event statistics for 2017. Of 805 reports reviewed, the Top 10 events most frequently reported included: unintended retention of a foreign body−116 events (first place) wrong-patient, wrong-site, wrong-procedure−95 events (third place) medication error−32 events (eighth place)…

Read More

Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on February 22 issued a Safety Alert for clarithromycin (Biaxin) because of the potential increased risk of heart problems or death associated with this antibiotic in patients with heart disease. A large clinical trial with 10-year follow-up found an unexpected increase in…

Read More

Editor's Note In this study to evaluate the efficiency and safety of overlapping surgery at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, researchers found that the practice does not expose patients to increased risk of negative outcomes. Of 26,260 cases analyzed for surgical time and 15,106 for outcomes, overlapping surgery patients had:…

Read More

Editor's Note In this study, implementing a global change in safety culture resulted in a significant change in surgical patient outcomes as measured by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP). After implementation of initiatives targeting communication and patient safety, surgical outcomes and culture scores…

Read More

Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 14 announced that the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) has launched a new initiative for US hospitals to complete their attestation when renewing their NPDB registrations. The NPDB is a repository of reports on medical malpractice payments and adverse actions related to healthcare…

Read More

Editor's Note Bringing specially trained dogs into ICUs can safely and substantially ease patients' physical and emotional pain, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. Having seen how successful animal-assisted therapy was in the inpatient rehabilitation unit at Johns Hopkins, the researchers adapted the hospital’s protocol to safely bring dogs to ICU…

Read More

Editor's Note Injury scene characteristics are linked to mortality, with odds of death highest for those injured in communities with higher median age or lower per capita income, and located farther from level 1 or 2 trauma centers, this study finds. This study of 16,082 patients found the odds of…

Read More