Error disclosure is an essential activity to addressing harm and establishing trust between clinicians and patients. Trainees in pediatric specialties at one urban medical center were provided with clinical vignettes depicting an error resulting in a safety event or near-miss and surveyed about error classification and disclosure. Participants agreed with disclosing serious and minor safety events, but only 7% agreed with disclosing a near miss event. Trainees’ decisions regarding disclosure considered the type of harm, parental preferences, ethical principles, and anticipatory guidance to address the consequences of the error.

This study examined whether a full-integration approach to a hospital merger and acquisitions (consisting of early leadership integration, rapid transition to electronic health record systems, local ownership of quality metrics, dashboards featuring system goals and actional analytics, and use of value-based and analytic-driven interventions) improved patient outcomes. Compared to the situation pre-merger, findings show that in-hospital mortality and hospital-acquired infection rates were lower, while patient satisfaction were higher after the full-integration merger.

This cross-sectional study examined outcomes for Medicare patients undergoing complex cancer surgery at U.S. News and World Report top-ranked cancer hospitals and their affiliates. Investigators found that surgery performed at affiliated hospitals was associated with higher 90-day mortality and that the top-ranked hospital was safer than its affiliates in 84% of the networks in the study. The authors suggest that while affiliated hospitals may share branding with top-ranked cancer facilities, further study of such networks is necessary to inform care for cancer patients.

Physician burnout threatens the well-being and sustainability of the health care workforce. This large prospective cohort study found that 45% of resident physicians experienced burnout. Higher burnout rates were detected in urology, general surgery, emergency medicine, and neurology residents (relative to internal medicine residents). The overall prevalence of burnout was similar to studies of practicing physicians, and significantly higher than studies of the general population. Although most residents were satisfied with their career choice, those who were burned out were more likely to regret their decision to become a physician. An Annual Perspective explored how burnout impacts patient safety.

This secondary data analysis found that most patients admitted to the hospital have their medications changed to another medication of the same class to be consistent with the hospital formulary. Researchers found that patients who undergo this therapeutic interchange are more likely to have errors in medication reconciliation at the time of hospital discharge compared to patients whose medications are not changed. The authors suggest that improved information technology may address this patient safety concern.

Avoiding readmissions has been an important safety goal, especially since Medicare has implemented nonpayment policies. Patient factors like health literacy and access to outpatient follow-up care have been implicated in previous research on readmissions. In contrast, this study sought to determine whether hospital quality affects readmission rates. By examining patients with multiple admissions for the same diagnosis but at different hospitals, they were able to focus on the effect of the hospital alone. Hospitals were divided into four tiers based on their known overall rate of readmissions, and then investigators assessed whether a given patient was more or less likely to be readmitted based on these tiers. They found a higher likelihood of a given patient being readmitted at hospitals in the tier with the most readmissions compared to those hospitals in the lowest readmission tier. The authors conclude that hospital readmissions are in part due to hospital factors as well as individual factors. This finding suggests that targeting hospital safety practices could reduce readmissions.

… do not lead to increased mortality. A previous WebM&M commentary discussed an incident involving a patient …

This retrospective analysis of Medicare claims data found that the decrease in readmissions following the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program occurred across target conditions and other diagnoses. Hospitals penalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had greater reductions in readmissions for the targeted conditions. These results support the effectiveness of the nonpayment policy.

… increase and the development of standards analogous to the I-PASS signout format for end-of-rotation handoffs. …

The SQUIRE guidelines were developed to improve reporting on research and initiatives targeted toward improving quality and safety of health care. This commentary provides examples for authors who seek to apply the revised guidelines in safety improvement work and write about their experiences.

Reducing readmissions has become a central target for hospitals, mostly spurred by Medicare policies that penalize excessive readmission rates. Although some intensive programs have successfully avoided readmissions, many other efforts have failed. This study at an urban academic medical center involved targeting only high-risk patients and providing them with a personalized transitional care plan that included detailed medication reconciliation and follow-up phone calls, as well as linking them with community resources. Over a 2-year period, the readmission rate dropped from 21.5% to 19.5% in the intervention group and from 21.1% to 21.0% in the control population. This 9% relative reduction in readmissions is significant, though it translates to a number-needed-to-treat of 50 (to avoid 1 readmission), which is quite high for a resource-intensive intervention. A prior PSNet perspective discussed strategies for reducing hospital readmissions.

This survey of acute care hospitals found significant variation for patient and family engagement activities. Most hospitals reported unrestricted visitor access, nearly two-thirds had formal error disclosure policies, and less than half had a patient advisory council. These findings demonstrate the gap between patient engagement recommendations and current hospital practice.

A computerized physician sign-out note embedded into the electronic medical record was designed at Yale–New Haven Hospital to facilitate patient handoffs. This study found that many non-physician health professionals have also been using the sign-out tool, which is felt to be an unintended positive consequence of the system.

Despite use of a standardized template, the inclusion of key data elements in inpatient signouts varied widely between specialties in this study conducted at a tertiary care teaching hospital. The authors attribute this finding to cultural differences across specialties and acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach to signouts may not be appropriate.

… optimize both verbal and written signouts. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective discussed the current knowledge base regarding …

This study suggests that frontline health care technicians may be less directly engaged in safety efforts compared with other hospital staff. Since these technicians have frequent direct contact with patients, this finding could have important implications for hospital-acquired infection rates.

Medication discrepancies remain common at hospital discharge, despite intense efforts to improve medication reconciliation processes. Conducted in a geriatric patient population, this prospective cohort study found a similar incidence of medication discrepancies at discharge compared with prior studies, but concerningly, patients were unaware of most of these errors. Both provider errors and patient misunderstanding occurred more frequently for medications prescribed for conditions other than the primary hospital diagnosis, indicating that disease-specific efforts to improve medication safety may miss many errors.

Patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or congestive heart failure (CHF) are more likely to require hospital readmission within 30 days of discharge. Intensive efforts are underway to reduce readmissions in these patients, spurred by federal policies that penalize hospitals with excess readmission rates. However, this survey of nearly 600 hospitals found widely varying implementation of specific strategies to decrease readmissions in these patients, despite nearly all hospitals having declared reducing AMI and CHF readmissions to be a priority. The authors acknowledge that a lack of evidence supporting strategies to reduce readmissions, as well as variability in the underlying causes of readmissions between hospitals, may have influenced which interventions were implemented at different hospitals.

A retrospective chart review revealed that approximately 1 in 8 patients with diabetes was discharged without any antihyperglycemic therapy following acute myocardial infarction. Almost 90% of these omissions lacked justification, suggesting widespread errors in medication reconciliation.

Although adverse events after discharge remain a common source of preventable readmissions, this study found that internal medicine residents felt the discharge process was largely uncoordinated and nonstandardized.