In 2006, Southampton (NY) Hospital's Department of Nursing conducted a needs assessment focusing on the quality of patient outcomes, staff recruitment and retention, and patient safety. Part of the assessment included distributing the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Hospital...
Recognizing that the healthcare sector produces a vast amount of waste and hazards to the environment, more healthcare facilities are doing their part in sustainability and greening efforts.
There are always times to come back to center-to return to why we work so hard to improve processes, performance, and measures like overall hospital ratings. In the sea of scores, metrics, and meetings we often drown in, we forget to come up for air and see that relationship...
Despite sustained attention from hospital leaders, wait times in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) ED were considerably longer than desired. Knowing that longer wait times means poor patient satisfaction and a higher risk of poor health outcomes, a team of resident physicians...
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released its most recent Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2012 User Comparative Database Report, which includes responses from 1,128 hospitals and 567,703 hospital staff, 76% of whom have direct interaction with patients...
The Joint Commission requires healthcare facilities to train employees annually. Part of that training includes best practices for infection control (IC), but effective training requires infection preventionists (IP) to employ training methods based on evidence-based best practices that yield...
Years ago, when I wanted information on certain patient safety subjects, I might have gone to multiple sources—the Internet (of course), a colleague within my network, and maybe even a book.
The National Quality Forum (NQF) recently endorsed two outcomes-based measures from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). The measures, surgical site infections (SSI) and urinary tract infections (UTI), were created in partnership with CMS...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the arrival of "Get Smart About Antibiotics Week" (observed November 14-20, 2011) by launching a new antibiotic tracking system that will allow hospitals to monitor antibiotic usage and compare themselves to other hospitals in the...