News briefs: Patient safety standards; new pharmacy tool; disease management standards
August 1, 2001 3 minutes read
News briefs
New patient safety standards in effect
Medical errors will have to be reported to patients and hospitals will have to take specific steps to prevent such problems, according to new patient safety standards implemented by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in July.
A 1999 Institute of Medicine report estimates that medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 hospital patients annually, and the new standards were designed to "create a culture of safety in hospitals and other health care organizations" according to JCAHO president Dennis O’Leary, MD.
Such a culture should strongly encourage the internal reporting of medical errors, and actively engage clinicians and other staff in the design of remedial steps to prevent future occurrences of these errors, he says. The additional emphasis on effective communication, appropriate training, and teamwork found in the standards’ language draw heavily upon lessons learned in both the aviation and health care industries.
A second major focus of the new standards is on the prevention of medical errors through the prospective analysis and redesign of vulnerable patient care systems such as the ordering, preparation and dispensing of medications. Potentially vulnerable systems can readily be identified through relevant national databases such as JCAHO’s Sentinel Event Database or through the hospital’s own risk-management experience.
Finally, the standards make clear the hospital’s responsibility to tell a patient if he or she has been harmed by the care provided. With the new standards implemented, more than half of all of JCAHO’s hospital standards relate directly to patient safety.
Further information on the new standards, including a list of the standards affected and the changes involved, can be found at www.jcaho.org/news_frm.html.
Solucient launches a new pharmacy tool
Solucient, a health care consulting company based in Baltimore, is launching a new interactive electronic pharmacy tool to help hospitals look at drug cost and utilization.
Solucient RxView was developed to help hospitals understand and measure drug cost and utilization. It compiles and organizes a hospital’s data using an Internet-based data submission process to quickly provide clients with targeted reports on drug cost, utilization, and outcomes.
These standard and custom reports identify opportunities for clients to reduce cost and improve patient care. It integrates readily available patient discharge data with inpatient drug dispensing data, allowing clients to establish comprehensive performance benchmarks.
Solucient RxView supports both macro- and micro-level analyses. Medical directors and financial administrators can use it to take a broad look at all aspects of pharmacological management, and clinical staff can drill down to review drug trends in disease management and the impact those trends have on patient care.
For more information on the product, visit the company web site at www.solucient.com.
NCQA draft of disease management standards
As readers of Healthcare Benchmarks read this issue, officials at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) are reading through public comments directed at its disease management standards. The new program was released for public comment in June, with comments due by July 31. Final standards should be released in December. Members of the Disease Management Association of America (DMAA) were among those who helped develop the program.
Many different types of organizations will be eligible to participate in NCQA’s disease management programs. Although most participants will likely be freestanding disease management (DM) organizations contracting with a managed care organization or employer, other organizations providing DM services — behavioral health care organizations, medical groups, etc. — are expected to participate as well.
Health plans and other organizations contracting with NCQA-accredited or certified DM programs will receive automatic credit on related quality improvement standards that they would otherwise be required to satisfy.
NCQA will offer disease management organizations two types of review. Accreditation is designed for comprehensive programs that address a full range of functional areas in disease management, including:
- patient self-management services;
- practitioner support;
- program content;
- clinical systems;
- coordination of care;
- measuring clinical performance.
Certification, by contrast, focuses just on one or more of the above functional areas. The draft standards can be downloaded from NCQA’s web site at www.ncqa.org.
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