The ECRI Institute recently released its "Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations" report, to help hospitals and other provider organizations decide where to focus their efforts and how to prioritize projects.
"In a time of competing priorities and limited resources in healthcare, this list can help guide internal discussions on where to focus," said Karen P. Zimmer, MD, MPH, medical director of ECRI Institute's patient safety, risk and quality group and of the ECRI Institute PSO, a federally designated patient safety organization.
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The list was compiled based on ECRI Institute PSO's database of patient safety events, research requests and root-cause analyses. The top 10 concerns are:
1. Data integrity failures
2. Poor care coordination with patient's next level of care
3. Reporting errors in test results
4. Drug shortages
5. Failure to adequately manage behavioral health patients in acute-care settings
6. Mislabeled specimens
7. Retained devices and unretrieved fragments
8. Patient falls while toileting
9. Inadequate monitoring for respiratory depression in patients taking opioids
10. Inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments
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