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Innovations
The PSNet Innovations page highlights pioneering advances that can improve patient safety. PSNet innovations are defined as “new or updated interventions, approaches, systems, tools, policies, organizational structures or business models implemented to improve or enhance quality of care and reduce harm.” The PSNet Innovations page includes innovations developed, tested, and sustained within the past five years, updates to existing innovations that were featured in AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange, as well as “emerging innovations,” which are new, novel approaches to patient safety improvement recently published in the peer-reviewed literature.
Latest Innovations
Seeking a sustainable process to enhance their hospitals’ response to sepsis, a multidisciplinary team at WellSpan Health oversaw the development and implementation of a system that uses customized electronic health... Read More
Patient falls in hospitals are common and debilitating adverse events that persist despite decades of effort to minimize them. Improving communication across the assessing nurse, care team, patient, and... Read More
With increasing recognition that health is linked to the conditions in which a patient lives, health systems are looking for innovative ways to support recently discharged patients in their lives... Read More
During a time of unprecedented patient volume and clinical uncertainty, a diverse team of health system administrators and... Read More
Emerging Innovations
Although wrong-site surgeries are rare, they can be devastating to patients. One otolaryngology (ENT) clinic developed a surgical marking procedure deemed practicable and useful by both providers and patients.
Cognitively impaired patients may be at increased risk of adverse events, such as falls, and assessment of cognitive status and implementation of appropriate supports is needed to improve their safety.
Minoritized patients continue to experience disproportionately high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. This hospital developed a health-equity checklist to identify if bias and/or social determinants of health played a role in preventable... Read More
Medication reconciliation is a common strategy to improve patient safety but is complex and time consuming. Three academic medical centers developed and implemented a risk stratification tool so limited pharmacist resources could be allocated to... Read More
Situational awareness during complex care events, such as clinical deterioration, medication administration, or the admission process, is an important component of teamwork and high reliability. This Canadian hospital used technology and human... Read More
All Innovations (51)
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and Lower Manhattan Hospital faced multiple challenges.
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a serious but preventable medical condition in which blood clots form in the veins.
An increasing volume of patients presenting for acute care can create a need for more ICU beds and intensivists and lead to longer wait times and boarding of critically ill patients in the emergency department (ED).1 Data suggest that boarding of critically ill patients for more than 6 hours in the emergency department leads to poorer outcomes and increased mortality.2,3 To address this issue, University of Michigan Health, part of Michigan Medicine, developed an ED-based ICU, the first of its kind, in its 1,000-bed adult hospital.
A lack of situational awareness can lead to delayed recognition of patient deterioration. This children’s hospital developed and implemented a situational awareness framework designed to decrease emergency transfers to the intensive care unit (ICU).
The Revised Safer Dx Instrument provides a standardized list of questions to help users retrospectively identify and assess the likelihood of a missed diagnosis in a healthcare episode. Results of the assessment are intended for use in system-level safety improvement efforts, clinician feedback, and patient safety research.
