Q: Many hospital leaders struggle with how seriously to take anonymous reports, especially when the facts cannot be immediately verified. From a compliance standpoint, how should healthcare organizations balance verification with the need to identify potential hazards early?
Hospitals can meet accreditation requirements, track quality measures, and deliver appropriate care, yet still see patients experience poor outcomes after they leave the building. One of the biggest opportunities for improving quality lies in what happens between healthcare settings.
Hospitals are showing broad improvement in patient safety, including sharp declines in healthcare-associated infections and greater adoption of medication safety practices. However, these gains can disappear quickly when organizations lose focus.
Most physician offices don’t store or use large quantities of controlled substances, but even if controlled substances are used infrequently, there is always a risk of theft. Assessing processes in physician offices will make certain that diversion risk is minimized.
Facilities and life safety leaders need to look beyond whether individual devices work. They also need to consider whether equipment remains accessible, whether inspection and testing records correspond with what is actually in the building, and more.
A hospital can have plenty of beds, sufficient physician staffing, and adequate emergency services, yet still leave some of the factors driving poor health unaddressed. Learn how emerging rural healthcare models are working to change this.
Failure to identify or interrupt contact transmissions, droplet transmissions, airborne transmissions, environmental spread, and transport-related exposure can lead to hospital-associated infections, illness among staff members, delayed treatment, and operational disruption.
Accreditation leaders should look beyond the survey itself and consider how accreditation can support continuous compliance, internal risk identification, staff engagement, and quality improvement.
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHF) is that laboratory testing should stop until the diagnosis is confirmed. In reality, the opposite is true.
The initial appointment of physicians and allied health practitioners in hospitals often receives more attention than their reappointment. However, the reappointment process presents a greater exposure to negligence and liability.
