This pre–post study found that medication administration errors decreased after the introduction of barcode medication administration, echoing prior studies. The authors conclude that use of barcode medication administration technology improves patient safety by reducing medication errors.

This retrospective study of claims data found that use of opioid medication among commercially ensured and Medicare populations did not change substantially between 2007 and 2017, despite increasing concerns about risks of opioid use. Opioid prescribing rates were higher and doses were larger among disabled Medicare beneficiaries.

Prior research has shown that prescribing opioids to opioid-naïve patients at the time of hospital discharge may lead to chronic use, placing these patients at increased risk for opioid-related harm. Using claims data, researchers compared opioid prescribing patterns for opioid-naïve patients in the emergency department setting with other care settings. Opioid prescribing in the emergency department more often comported with CDC guidelines and was less likely to lead to chronic use among opioid-naïve patients.

… J Eval Clin Pract … J Eval Clin Pract … Diagnostic uncertainty is common and can … critical to timely and accurate diagnosis. A recent WebM&M commentary discussed how cognition can influence diagnostic …

Similar to another study published in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, this retrospective study found no association between participation in the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and surgical outcomes over time. This study examined 3 and a half years of data from the University HealthSystem Consortium, which represents a large cohort of academic medical centers.

Although effectiveness of rapid response teams has traditionally been measured by using rates of cardiac arrests or intensive care unit transfers, this study advocates for using the AHRQ failure to rescue metric instead. Failure to rescue rates declined in the second year after implementation of the rapid response team in concert with increased utilization of the team.

This systematic review found seven different definitions of preventable harm used in the patient safety literature, but none were considered to be more valid or reliable than the others.

The epidemiology of adverse events on a population basis has been well studied, but how these data translate to risks for individual patients is not as clear. The likelihood of suffering an adverse event is directly tied to length of hospitalization, and this study sought to evaluate a complementary question: whether patients who are more severely ill at admission are at increased risk of preventable harm. By linking adverse event data from various sources—including Patient Safety Indicators, voluntary error reports, and infection control reports—to clinical databases, the authors were able to show that higher illness severity is associated with an increased risk of adverse events during hospitalization. These findings are supported by the fact that intensive care unit patients have consistently been shown to experience more adverse events. An AHRQ WebM&M commentary discusses a case of a medication error occurring in an acutely ill patient with multiple underlying comorbidities.

This study found that the Patient Safety Indicators lacked sensitivity and specificity for detecting postoperative adverse events, compared to the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program adverse event detection methodology.

… journal of the American College of Medical Quality … Am J Med Qual … Hospital boards are increasingly being called …

Hospital readmissions due to adverse events after discharge are relatively common, and may be precipitated by medication errors and failure to follow up on pending test results—problems that could, in theory, be averted by early outpatient follow-up. However, this Mayo Clinic study found that patients who were given follow-up appointments (at a mean of 6 days after discharge) were just as likely to be readmitted or visit the emergency room within 30 days after discharge as those without follow-up. Interventions such as those in the Care Transitions study and the Project RED study have relied on more comprehensive, nurse-driven interventions to reduce readmission rates and post-discharge emergency department visits.

… the International Society for Quality in Health Care … Int J Qual Health Care … Measuring safety in health care settings … public reporting and performance comparisons. An AHRQ WebM&M commentary discusses the limitations of using PSIs for …

As part of efforts to improve the quality of care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will not reimburse hospitals for additional costs incurred when a patient experiences certain complications of care (e.g., a decubitus ulcer), and some private insurers have followed suit. This study tested the validity of using administrative (billing) data to make these determinations, by evaluating the accuracy of the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators at identifying in-hospital complications. For several patient safety indicators, the authors found that the majority of cases were actually pre-existing conditions, and thus did not represent a complication of care. Furthermore, cases where an in-hospital complication occurred did not receive significantly higher financial payments than cases without complications. A prior study also found that screening administrative data alone was an inadequate method for identifying post-surgical complications.

The authors propose criteria for classifying a multi-location hospital as a single reporting entity and provide a case study to assess these criteria.

This prospective study found improvement in medication documentation at one clinic after implementing an intervention to improve the accuracy and completeness of the electronic medical record. The authors conclude that staff and patients need to actively participate in this process.