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Somethings happening in the world of quality improvement that might not have been thought possible 10 years ago. In ever-growing numbers, hospitals that once thought of each other only as competitors are joining forces to attack the major quality improvement challenges they all face.
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Fifty-six hospitals from 50 states and U.S. territories, collaborating to improve surgical care, significantly cut the rate of surgical infections for more than 35,000 patients in a yearlong, nationwide effort sponsored by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) and led by Qualis Health, the quality improvement organization (QIO) for Washington, Alaska, and Idaho.
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A new study by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) on hospital performance between 2002 and 2004 showed that hospitals with a low level of performance at baseline had greater improvements over the two-year period than hospitals with a high level of performance at baseline in 16 of 17 process-of-care measures.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, MD, has begun the first phase of research reviews that will be performed under its new Effective Health Care Program.
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One of the better known ongoing collaborations in the United States is the Cambridge, MA-based Institute for Healthcare Improvements (IHI) 100,000 Lives Campaign, whose goal is to save 100,000 lives through targeted QI interventions by June 14, 2006.
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A group of alert instrument technicians at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, averted disaster when they discovered that several barrels of liquid labeled Klenzyme turned out, in fact, to contain hydraulic fluid.
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On July 29, President Bush signed into law The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005, which will create legal and confidentiality protections for patient safety information that providers share for educational purposes, and create patient safety organizations to promote information sharing.
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Your ED has a policy that verbal orders are to be used in emergencies only but a medical staff member routinely calls in telephone orders for patients. What do you do?
