The following studies and stories regarding patient safety, compiled from Becker's Hospital Review and Becker's ASC Review over the past month, starting with the most recent.
1. Tension and distractions between co-workers in the workplace can have a negative impact on patient safety and quality of care, according to an Institute for Healthcare Improvement WIHI broadcast.
2. The Leapfrog Group released its spring 2014 Hospital Safety Scores, giving an A grade to 804 hospitals across the country. Hospital improvement improved an average of 6.3 percent from 2012, and 48 of the 50 states improved their mean scores. On the other hand, 150 hospitals received a D grade.
3. The Joint Commission's Center for Transforming Healthcare's "Preventing Falls with Injury" project has reduced the number of patient falls by 35 percent in participating hospitals.
4. Howard Bergendahl, MS, JD, president of The Bergendahl Institute, outlines four characteristics of a strong patient safety culture: everyone is empowered and expected to question something that does not seem right, everyone is aware of the risks in the organization's activities, workers value learning and continuous improvement and teamwork is seen as a workplace requirement.
5. The ECRI Institute has released its "Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations" report, with data integrity failures and poor care coordination being the top two concerns.
6. Nearly 12 million U.S. adult outpatients are misdiagnosed every year, according to a study in BMJ Quality & Safety. Half of these misdiagnoses could lead to adverse events.
7. The number of sentinel events remained virtually unchanged from 2012 to 2013, according to a report by the Joint Commission, falling only minutely from 901 in 2012 to 887 in 2013.
8. WellStar executives designed and built the newly opened WellStar Paulding Hospital in Hiram, Ga., around a centralized focus on patient safety and patient experience.
9. Restrictions on resident duty hours may not improve patient safety, as the restriction on hours was intended to do, according to a study in Annals of Surgery.
10. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released its "Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2014 User Comparative Database Report," asking healthcare professionals about communication openness, feedback, frequency of reporting adverse events and other patient safety concerns. Hospitals reported teamwork within units, and supervisor expectations and actions promoting patient safety were the top two reported patient safety actions.
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