Joint Commission’s 2010 Patient Safety Goals Reduce Requirements

I wrote a story today for HealthLeaders Media which I will refer you to about The Joint Commission’s release of the 2010 National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG). The main thing to take away, however, is the amount of requirements have been significantly reduced from what was required in the 2009 NPSGs. This will hopefully make compliance easier/clearer for the field and allow healthcare workers to truly focus on patient safety, not on proving compliance.

Anyway, you can find the article here. There are many details about deleted NSPGs as well as Goals that have been moved to the general standards. Additionally, some of the changes take effect immediately.

I’d be interested in any initial feedback from you as readers who will be working on implementing these changes. Are you happy to see this reduction in requirements?

Study: Medical errors may not increase during July, contrary to popular belief

A study published in the September 2009 Journal of the American College of Surgeons has concluded that medical errors do not in fact increase during the month of July specifically in a Level I trauma center. Researchers tested the popularly held belief that during the months of July and August the amount of medical errors increases because that is the time of year during which new medical residents begin practicing at hospitals around the country.

To test this belief, researchers reviewed data from 12,525 blunt trauma patients by month and 14,798 by quarter over a five-year period from an academic, tertiary Level I trauma care center. Results showed that the month or quarter of the year during which patients were admitted had no correlation to mortality rates.

Click here to read the full abstract from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Readers, have you ever personally felt that the “July phenomenon” exists at your facility?

Medical device review process to be investigated by IOM

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review the current process for approving medical devices, reports the Wall Street Journal. The request comes after the FDA recently came under fire for rapidly approving certain devices. The current process allows device makers to market products without having those products undergo in depth trial testing. Devices can be cleared for marketing as long as they are similar to other devices already in existence. However, the current process is viewed by many as too quick, allowing devices that should not be cleared for use available for use.

The IOM expects its review, which will cost $1.3 million, will run through 2011. The medical device industry defended its practices. It has expected changes, however, since the Obama administration announced changes in leadership at the FDA earlier this year.

You can read the full story here.

Preventing Rehospitalizations audio conference on Monday!

Thought I’d highlight a fantastic program HCPro is offering next Monday from 1pm-2:30pm. The audio conference, titled Preventing Rehospitalizations: Engage Your Hospital and Healthcare Community,  features two knowledgeable speakers. 

Amy E. Boutwell, MD, MPP, director of strategic improvement policy for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) will lead off the audio conference discussing the many factors that contribute to high rates of rehospitalization, some ongoing projects that have been working to reduce the number of readmitted patients, and the IHI’s recently launched STAAR initiative, which stands for STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations. The second speaker, Margaret Namie, RN, BSN, MPH, CPHQ, vice president of quality at Mercy Health Partners of Southwest Ohio, will share her insights into creating a program for preventing rehospitalizations in heart failure patients.

I hope you consider listening in, it is going to be a great audio conference.

For more information, or to register for the audio conference, click here.

Rapping doctor wins HHS Flu Prevention Contest

To follow up on an earlier post I’d done on the contest being run by the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. John Clarke, the ‘rapping doctor’ has won the competition for creating a commercial about preventing the spread of the flu. He gets all of the facts in his rap and, dare I say it,  makes preparing for the flu sound like fun! Although this clip wasn’t my first choice, it’s still a great and funny take on flu prevention.

For more information, visit www.flu.gov, and to view the runners up in this contest, click here. And of course, be sure to look for Dr. Clarke and his rap on TV soon!

National Quality Forum endorses set of measure for managing medications

The National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed a set of 18 measures to better manage over-the-ounter and prescription medications and improve the safety of using such medications. The standards focus on helping patients improve their adherence to prescription regimens. Specifically, patients with certain conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, coronary artery disease, kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and schizophrenia, are more likely to be involved in a preventable adverse drug event due to incorrectly taking medication.

Up to 40 percent of patients do not take their medications as prescribed, and an estimated 1.5 million preventable adverse drug events occur each year. The National Quality Forum hopes these new standards will reduce these numbers by identifying gaps and areas to improve.

To read more from the NQF, click here.

Do you think the NQF’s latest set of measures will help those in the industry understand why certain patients are more at risk for an adverse event when taking over the counter prescriptions?

RWJF announces $1.5 million in grants for patient safety projects

The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced it is awarding $1.5 million to different patient safety research projects throughout the country. The grants are being given through the RWJF’s Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) and will run through the next two years. The grants specifically are being awarded to five teams from various institutions, each receiving $300,000 to study how improved nursing care can positively affect patient safety.

These grants have been awarded in an effort to bridge the gap on scientific research done to study the relationship between what nurses do on a daily basis and patient care. Since 2005 INQRI teams have undertaken numerous patient safety studies and these new studies will continue to study how nursing care can affect the quality of care provided at a hospital.

You can find more information about the grantees by clicking here.

IHI launches online component of Improvement Map

Earlier this week, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) launched the online tool component of its Improvement Map, which was announced at IHI’s December 2008 National Forum (and I’m sure many of you have waiting in anticipation since then). The Improvement Map is a collection of processes that ultimately determine how a healthcare organization functions. The processes are broken down by domain (type of processes) and by aim (corresponding with the Institute of Medicine’s six aims for improvement).  Users also have the option of customizing the Improvement Map so only the processes in which they are most interested appear when they log on.

This comprehensive resource looks to be an  asset to the field. Many of you reading may be involved with one or many of the IHI’s existing initiatives and I’m sure you’ll find this new online component of real value. Not only does the Improvement Map offer guidance on many specific topics, it also provides resources, information, and points users in the direction even more information outside of its confines if you so desire.

Check it out!

Patients of the future will demand increased communication, be more informed consumers

In the future, healthcare providers can expect more informed patients who want their care team members to be more open to communicating via e-mail and other Internet platforms. They will also be more knowledgeable about potential treatment options, their own health records, and want to know upfront about the costs that will be incurred with medical care. According to this new HealthLeaders Media article, patients of the future will be more savvy, informed customers.

My colleague Gienna Shaw addresses some of the reasons why many of these attributes, some that patients exhibit today, are going to become commonplace in the future. Using technology to communicate with patients will be a must as a new generation of patients who communicate through e-mail, text, and instant message will expect their physicians to do the same. Those same patients will be accessing their own personal health records as more hospitals and insurance companies provide them, putting them more in touch with their plan of care. These expectations, along with other developments, will put caregivers and patients in more of a partnership.

Check out her article for some more thoughts on what tomorrow’s (or next year’s or decade’s) patients will look like. Do you agree with these points? What do you think patients of the future will expect from their healthcare?

Medical imaging putting patients at risk?

The Boston Globe has an interesting article today about the dangers of medical imaging. A study in the August New England Journal of Medicine shows that 70% of adults have undergone some sort of medical scan that exposed them to radiation in the past three years. While the majority of those radiation doses were relatively low, 20% received moderate doses. What’s more, 2% of adults received high or very high doses. This means they were exposed to more radiation than workers in the healthcare and nuclear industries are allowed to be exposed to annually, putting them at a higher risk for developing cancer.

This is mainly because of the number of medical scans has increased dramatically in the U.S. in the past two decades. Of course, the information contained in a medical scan often warrants its occurrence. Images have gotten clearer and patients who know that imaging is an option often request they have one. However, the researchers in this study are asking how many scans is too many.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is adding information to its electronic medical record system that will allow physicians to see how many medical scans a patient has undergone within the Partners system (which owns the hospital) to allow physicians to make more informed decisions about scheduling further scans. This is a fairly advanced option, one that many health systems in the U.S. do not use. However, the cumulative effects of radiation may soon warrant this type of monitoring system on a larger scale.

You can read the full article here. Do any of your patients ever express fear about the amount of radiation they are receiving from medical scans? Do you as a healthcare provider ever have reservations about ordering a scan for that reason?