Pharmacists are frequently involved in medication reviews for hospitalized patients prescribed direct oral anti-coagulants (DOAC). This randomized controlled study explored pharmacist involvement with patients prescribed DOAC in ambulatory care. The intervention included up to three phone calls, electronic health record communication with the prescriber, and recommendations for lab work. After 90 days, there were no differences in clinically important medication errors between groups.

Stewardship interventions seek to optimize use of healthcare services, such as diagnostic tests or antibiotics. This article reports findings from a 14-site multidisciplinary collaborative evaluating pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) blood culture practices before and after implementation of a diagnostic stewardship intervention. Researchers found that rates of blood cultures, broad-spectrum antibiotic use, and central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) were reduced postintervention.

… J Am Med Dir Assoc … Transitioning from hospital to nursing home (NH) can be a vulnerable time for patients. This study looked for … currently available quality measures. … Field  TS, Fouayzi H, Crawford S, et al. The association of nursing home …

High-risk medications have the potential to cause serious patient harm if not administered correctly. In this randomized trial, a pharmacist-directed intervention (including in-home assessment by a clinical pharmacist, communication with the primary care team, and telephone follow-up) did not result in a lower rate of adverse drug events or medication errors involving high-risk drug classes during the posthospitalization period.

… N Engl J Med … This study randomized primary care practices across … ten health care systems to evaluate the effectiveness of a multifactorial intervention to prevent falls with injury , … trained nurses. The intervention did not result in a significantly lower rate of serious fall injury compared to …

… are urgently needed to address this patient safety gap. A previous WebM&M commentary discussed challenges of nursing …

This systematic review compared military mortality reviews to nonmilitary studies of pre- or in-hospital mortality reviews. The authors note widely varying review processes, data inclusion, and preventability assessment, and recommend standardization of definitions and processes in order to reduce bias.

… Commission journal on quality and patient safety … Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf … The Joint Commission requires hospitals … successful programs and future directions for the field. A past WebM&M commentary described the harms associated with …

Inaccurate medication reconciliation leads to medication discrepancies and places patients at risk for adverse drug events. Health information exchange can enhance medication safety through improved access to prescribing information. In this cluster-randomized trial, a pharmacist performed medication reconciliation with access to a regional health information exchange for patients admitted to a single hospital in the intervention arm and without such information access for patients in the control arm. In the first 10 months of the study, the health information exchange provided access to prescribing information from large hospitals and a pharmacy insurance plan, but only hospital prescribing information was available during the last 21 months because the insurance plan began charging for data. Although researchers found no significant difference between the intervention and control groups with regard to the number of medication discrepancies, patients who underwent medication reconciliation with access to pharmacy insurance data had a higher number of medication discrepancies identified than control patients. They conclude that charging for pharmacy data interrupted the positive effect of health information exchange on medication reconciliation in the study. A past WebM&M commentary described how lack of access to prescribing information led to an adverse drug event.

… Journal of general internal medicine … J Gen Intern Med … Electronic health record alerts contribute … Some alerts are more time-sensitive than others and a delayed response can adversely impact patient safety. This … providers within 24 hours if the provider's InBasket had a high number of notifications at the time of alert delivery …

This commentary describes the development of a multidisciplinary council to collectively lead patient safety efforts for children's hospitals in a large health system. The authors highlight the value the council brought to project coordination, standard setting, and performance improvement across the organization.

Alarm fatigue is an increasingly recognized safety concern. This retrospective cohort study found that primary care clinicians were more likely to override alerts when there were multiple alerts per patient, but overrides were not related to overall workload or repeated exposure to the same alert. The authors recommend reducing the number of alerts per patient to address alarm fatigue.

Health information technology (IT) has had a profound impact on health care. Although health IT has led to efficiency gains and improved safety, unintended consequences remain a concern. In this systematic review, researchers analyzed 69 studies from 2001 through 2012 that examined the use of health IT in a clinical setting and its effect on safety outcomes for patients. About one-third of the studies demonstrated a positive impact of health IT on patient safety outcomes, but many of these focused on the hospital setting, involved a single institution, and looked at decision support or computerized provider order entry. The authors suggest that future studies should focus on other areas in which the impact of health IT remains understudied, such as in outpatient and long-term care settings, and they underscore the need for higher quality research. A recent WebM&M commentary described the unintended consequences of health IT.

Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems can effectively prevent many prescribing errors, but their overall safety benefit has not yet been fully realized. More widespread implementation of these systems has revealed new safety concerns. A prior study funded by the US Food and Drug Administration found that many of the safety issues associated with CPOE could be ascribed to poor usability of the systems, the lack of interoperability, and failure to track and learn from concerns identified by users. This follow-up study analyzed more than 1300 CPOE error reports to further classify the types of errors and their impact on patient care. Investigators determined that patients experienced delays in receiving medications due to these errors and were at risk of receiving duplicate medications or incorrect doses of medications. Similar to previous studies, the most common types of CPOE errors included problems with transmitting orders to the correct site of care, incorrect dose, or duplicate orders that were not detected by the system. A WebM&M commentary discussed an error that led to patient harm due to an incorrect default CPOE order.

Program infrastructure that incorporates the knowledge of staff at executive and unit levels can enable system improvements to be sustained over time. This commentary describes how an academic medical center integrated departmental needs with overarching organizational concerns to inform safety and quality improvement work. The authors highlight the need for flexibility and structure to ensure success.

Traditional morbidity and mortality conferences were designed to focus on educational opportunities to learn from medical errors. In this study, introducing a structured systems-oriented morbidity and mortality conference in a pediatric intensive care unit led to higher attendance rates and more proposed local quality improvement interventions.

This study updates the previously described progress of patient safety efforts at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 2012, hospital leaders declared their goal of exceeding The Joint Commission Top Performer award thresholds by achieving at least 96% compliance on accountability measures. The program included creating a robust quality management infrastructure through the Armstrong Institute, engaging frontline clinicians in peer learning communities, and transparently reporting monthly data with a detailed step-based accountability plan for underachieving metrics. This study describes how the hospital was able to sustain performance on all of the accountability measures through 2014. The authors attribute their continued success to establishing an enduring quality management infrastructure, a project management office, and a formal accountability framework. This model highlights the degree of organization required to create lasting changes that improve patient safety across health systems.

… Journal of patient safety … J Patient Saf … Some states require public reporting of rates …

… … Acad Med … This study describes the early experience of a new infrastructure for quality and safety at Johns Hopkins Medicine. A major component of this effort was the 2011 creation of the … The new governance structure includes oversight from a patient safety and quality board committee. The overall …

Similar to prior research in internal medicine and surgical programs, this survey study found that structure and processes of morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences in pediatric intensive care units varied widely. Moreover, there was substantial disagreement between respondents, making it unclear whether the M&M conferences actually conform to key elements of medical incident analysis.