… avoiding over $14,000 of costs per 1,000 patient days. … Dykes PC,  Curtin-Bowen M, Lipsitz S, et al. Cost of inpatient falls and cost-benefit …

Adverse events can be identified through multiple methods, including trigger tools and voluntary reporting systems. In this comparison study, the Global Trigger Tool identified 79 AE in 88 oncology patients, compared to 21 in the voluntary reporting system; only two AE were identified by both. Results indicate multiple sources should be used to detect AE.

Patient safety dashboards are used to communicate real-time patient data to appropriately augment care. This study found that higher usage of an electronic patient safety dashboard resulted in lower 30-day readmission rates among patients discharged from adult medicine units compared to lower usage groups.

Patient falls are an ongoing patient safety concern, yet mitigating falls among inpatients remains challenging. This article describes one nursing home’s experience adapting the Fall TIPS program for use in their patient population. The program, which emphasizes tailored fall-prevention and patient-family engagement, resulted in a decrease in the rate of falls and injuries.

Failure to rescue – the lack of adequate response to patient deterioration – has been associated with adverse patient outcomes, particularly in acute care settings. This article describes two health systems’ efforts to implement in-hospital Clinical Monitoring System Technology (CMST) which positively impacted failure-to-rescue events. The authors identified barriers and facilitators to CMST use, which informed the development of an implementation toolkit addressing readiness, implementation, patient/family introduction, champions, and troubleshooting. 

… in falls and a 35% reduction in falls with injuries. … Dykes  PC, Burns Z, Adelman J, et al. Evaluation of a …

This study randomized primary care practices across ten health care systems to evaluate the effectiveness of a multifactorial intervention to prevent falls with injury, which included risk assessment and individualized plans administered by specially trained nurses. The intervention did not result in a significantly lower rate of serious fall injury compared to usual care.

The Fall TIPS (Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety) program has been shown to be effective in preventing inpatient falls through formal risk assessment and tailored patient care plans. This study demonstrated that patients with access to the Fall TIPS program are more engaged and feel more confident in their ability to prevent falls than those who were not exposed to the program.

… KO, Rozenblum R, Dalal AK, Benneyan J, Bates DW, Dykes PC. …

… in detail, rates of error and harm were similar. A WebM&M commentary described a chemotherapy infusion error that …

This single-site survey of resident and attending physicians across multiple specialties uncovered multiple safety vulnerabilities in the process of interhospital transfer. Investigators found that physicians and patients were both dissatisfied with timing of transfers and that critical patient records were missing upon transfer. These issues raise safety concerns for highly variable interhospital transfer practices.

Researchers sought to assess the effectiveness of a fall prevention toolkit in engaging patients and families in fall prevention. They used several different modalities to foster engagement including an electronic medical record version, a paper version, and a version displayed on the patient's bedside monitor. All three methods were effective.

In this cluster-randomized trial, researchers examined the impact of an automated phone call with the option of transfer to a live pharmacist on detecting potential adverse drug events for patients newly started on medications for certain conditions in the primary care setting. Patients receiving the intervention were more likely to have medications stopped with documentation reflecting adverse effects.

When patients and caregivers report adverse events, they may identify unique issues that other reporting systems do not capture. The authors propose adjustments to AHRQ's Common Formats for safety event reporting that allow patients and caregivers to more effectively report adverse events. An Annual Perspective emphasized the value of patient adverse event reporting in larger efforts to engage patients in their safety.

Intravenous medication administration errors related to smart pumps can compromise patient safety. Prior research has shown that such errors are common and often involve incorrect dosing and workarounds. Researchers describe the development and implementation of a multicomponent safety intervention bundle developed to reduce medication administration errors associated with smart pump use. Although both the overall error rate and medication error rate per 100 medication administrations decreased, the intervention did not lead to a reduction in the rate of potentially harmful errors. A past PSNet perspective discussed the use of smart pumps to improve safety.

Errors and discrepancies in intravenous infusions were common in this study performed at two English hospitals, but only a small proportion of errors led to patient harm. The use of smart pumps did not appear to protect against errors.

These paired systematic reviews examined alert fatigue in the intensive care unit. The first systematic review found several strategies to reduce alerts including prioritizing alerts, developing multipart rules instead of simple alerts, and customizing commercial platforms with end-user input. The second systematic review found that alarm best practices from high reliability industries are not adhered to in intensive care unit settings.

… alert fatigue compromises patient safety . A previous WebM&M commentary discussed the challenges of designing safe CPOE. …

This commentary describes an AHRQ-funded project to develop an interactive web-based dashboard to communicate patient data in real time to augment safety of care activities. The authors review important functions of the tool, considerations for future development, and initial evaluation results.

Patient falls represent a serious source of preventable harm, yet mitigating the fall risk of inpatients remains challenging. In this study, researchers describe the implementation of an inpatient fall prevention toolkit at two hospitals.