The PSNet Collection: All Content

The AHRQ PSNet Collection comprises an extensive selection of resources relevant to the patient safety community. These resources come in a variety of formats, including literature, research, tools, and Web sites. Resources are identified using the National Library of Medicine’s Medline database, various news and content aggregators, and the expertise of the AHRQ PSNet editorial and technical teams.

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Displaying 1 - 20 of 195 Results

Cost of inpatient falls and cost-benefit analysis of implementation of an evidence-based fall prevention program.

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Dykes PC, Curtin-Bowen M, Lipsitz S, et al. JAMA Health Forum. 2023;4:e225125.

Patient falls are associated with poorer clinical outcomes, and increased costs to the health system. This study describes the economic costs of implementing the Fall Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (Fall TIPS) Program in eight American hospitals. Results show the Fall TIPS program reduced falls by 19%, avoiding over $14,000 of costs per 1,000 patient days.

Sustaining improvement of hospital-wide initiative for patient safety and quality: a systematic scoping review.

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Moon SEJ, Hogden A, Eljiz K. BMJ Open Qual. 2022;11:e002057.

Health systems often implement innovative quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, but the longevity and sustainability of these initiatives remains a challenge. This scoping review explored the factors which enable and hinder sustainability of hospital-wide quality improvement (QI) initiatives. Three overarching themes were identified – the role of (1) people, including the organizational and leadership teams, as well as frontline staff implementing the QI initiatives, (2) processes, such as local and organizational integration and planning for sustainability, and (3) the organizational environment such as resources, infrastructure, and hospital culture.

Improving communication from hospital to skilled nursing facility through standardized hand-off: a quality improvement project.

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Baluyot A, McNeill C, Wiers S. Patient Safety. 2022;4:18-25.

Transitions from hospital to skilled nursing facilities (SNF) remain a patient safety challenge. This quality improvement (QI) project included development of a structured handoff tool to decrease the wait time for receipt of controlled medications and intravenous (IV) antibiotics and time to medication administration. The project demonstrated significant improvements in both aims and can be replicated in other SNFs.

Interventions to increase patient safety in long-term care facilities-umbrella review.

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Świtalski J, Wnuk K, Tatara T, et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022;19:15354.

Improving patient safety in long-term care facilities is an ongoing challenge. This systematic review identified three types of interventions that can improve safety in long-term care facilities – (1) promoting safety culture, (2) reducing occupational stress and burnout, and (3) increasing medication safety.

Assessing experiences of racism among Black and White patients in the emergency department.

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Agarwal AK, Sagan C, Gonzales R, et al. J Am Coll Emerg Physicians Open. 2022;3:e12870.

Black patients who report experiencing racism in healthcare report poorer quality of care. In this text-message based study, Black and White patients discharged from the emergency department (ED) were asked about their overall quality of care and whether they perceived an impact of their race on their care. While Black patients reported high overall quality of care, 10% believed their race negatively impacted their care. The authors highlight the importance of asking about the impact of race on care to identify and reduce potential disparities.

The development of the concept of return-on-investment from large-scale quality improvement programmes in healthcare: an integrative systematic literature review.

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Thusini S’thembile, Milenova M, Nahabedian N, et al. BMC Health Serv Res. 2022;22:1492.

Health systems often consider return on investment (ROI) when considering implementation of quality improvement and patient safety interventions (i.e., costs saved by preventing medical errors or improving quality of care). This systematic review explored how ROI concepts have been used in studies assessing large-scale quality improvement programs.

Driving Learning and Improvement After RCA2 Event Reviews.

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Collaborative for Accountability and Improvement. January 26, 2023, 2:00-3:00 PM (eastern).

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a recognized approach to examining failures by identifying causal factors to define improvement effort. This session will discuss challenges to the effective use of RCA results and examine an approach to present them that supports effective improvement action.

Sources of nurse-sensitive inpatient safety improvement.

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Dynan L, Smith RB. Health Serv Res. 2022;57:1235-1246.

Nurses play a critical role in ensuring patient safety, and prior research has shown that better nurse-staffing ratios and nurse engagement can improve mortality rates. This study of nearly 300 Florida acute-care hospitals evaluated the effect of expenditures on continuing nurse education staffing ratios of several AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators (PSI). Increased spending on both improved outcomes in catheter-related blood stream infections, pressure ulcers, and deep vein thrombosis.

Lessons learned in implementing a chronic opioid therapy management system.

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Carlile N, Fuller TE, Benneyan JC, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:e1142-e1149.

The opioid epidemic has prompted national and institutional guidelines for safe opioid prescribing. This paper describes the development, implementation, and sustainment of a toolkit for safer opioid prescribing for chronic pain in primary care. The authors describe organizational, technical, and external barriers to implementation along with attempted solutions and their effects. The toolkit is available as supplemental material.

In conversation with Ellen Deutsch, MD, MS, FACS, FAAP, FSSH, CPPS

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Perspective on Safety December 14, 2022

Ellen Deutsch, MD, MS, FACS, FAAP, FSSH, CPPS is a Medical Officer in the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Deutsch is a pediatric otolaryngologist and has vast experience in simulation and resilience engineering. We spoke with her about resilient healthcare and how resilient engineering principles are applied to improve patient safety.

Factors that affect opioid quality improvement initiatives in primary care: insights from ten health systems.

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Childs E, Tano CA, Mikosz CA, et al. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2023;49:26-33.

In response to the increase in opioid deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain in 2016, with an update released in 2022. This study reports on the CDC Opioid QI Collaborative which was launched to identify successful evidence-based strategies for implementing the guidelines. The challenges and strategies described in the publication can be used by health systems to accelerate implementation of the guidelines.

Health system redesign of cardiac monitoring oversight to optimize alarm management, safety, and staff engagement.

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Engel JR, Lindsay M, O'Brien S, et al. J Nurs Adm. 2022;52:511-518.

Alert fatigue occurs when healthcare workers become desensitized to alarms over time, especially when alarms tend to be clinically nonsignificant, and therefore, ignored or not responded to. This study reports on one health system’s redesign of cardiac monitoring structure to reduce alert fatigue. Through a four-phase quality improvement project, three hospitals were able to decrease alarms by 74-95% and sustained the results for 12 months.

Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety.

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Federal Office of Public Health. 2m2c Convention Centre, Montreux, Switzerland, February 23-24, 2023.

Medical errors continue to cause harm worldwide despite the planning and efforts to reduce them. This bi-yearly session will feature topics exploring the theme of “Less Harm, Better Care – from Resolution to Implementation.” It will cover weaknesses in improvement initiative implementation surfaced by the COVID-19 pandemic and offer approaches for addressing unsustainable program launches and implementation practices.

Resilient Healthcare and the Safety-I and Safety-II Frameworks

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Perspective on Safety December 14, 2022

This piece discusses resilient healthcare and the Safety-I and Safety-II approaches to patient safety.

A multicenter collaborative effort to reduce preventable patient harm due to retained surgical items.

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Carmack A, Valleru J, Randall KH, et al. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2023;49:3-13.

Retained surgical items (RSI) are a never event, a serious and preventable event. After experiencing a high rate of RSIs, this United States health system implemented a bundle to reduce RSI, improve near-miss reporting, and increase process reliability in operating rooms. The bundle consisted of five elements: surgical stop, surgical debrief, visual counters, imaging, and reporting.

Using Human Factors Engineering and the SEIPS Model to Advance Patient Safety in Care Transitions

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Perspective on Safety November 16, 2022

Human factors engineering or ergonomics (HFE) is a scientific discipline broadly focused on interactions among humans and other elements of a system.

In Conversation With... Pascale Carayon, PhD and Nicole Werner, PhD

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Perspective on Safety November 16, 2022

Dr. Pascale Carayon, PhD, is a professor emerita in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Healthcare Systems Engineering (WIHSE). Dr. Nicole Werner, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Health and Wellness Design at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. We spoke with both of them about the role of human factors engineering has in improving healthcare delivery and its role in patient safety.

Toward zero harm: Mackenzie Health's journey toward becoming a high reliability organization and eliminating avoidable harm.

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Wilson M-A, Sinno M, Hacker Teper M, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:680-685.

Achieving zero preventable harm is an ongoing goal for health systems. In this study, researchers developed a five-part strategy to achieve high-reliability and eliminate preventable harm at one regional health system in Canada – (1) engage leadership, (2) develop an organization-specific patient safety framework, (3) monitor specific quality aims (e.g., high-risk, high-cost areas), (4) standardize the incident review process, including the use of root cause analysis, and (5) communicate progress to staff in real-time via electronic dashboards. One-year post-implementation, researchers observed an increase in patient safety incident reporting and improvements in safety culture, as well as decreases in adverse events such as falls, pressure injuries and healthcare-acquired infections.

Evaluation of Quality, Safety and Value in Veterans Health Administration Facilities, Fiscal 2021.

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Washington, DC: Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General; 2022. Report No. 22-00818-03.

Organizational evaluations often reveal opportunities to address persistent quality and safety issues. This extensive inspection report shares findings from examinations at 45 Veterans Health Administration care facilities that focused on assessing oversight, system redesign and surgical programs. Recommendations drawn from the analysis call for improvements in protected peer review, surgical work structure and surgical adverse incident examination.

The Stoplight Mobility Alert System for safety and prevention of falls in children with physical and cognitive impairments.

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Patient Safety Innovation November 16, 2022

Patient falls are a never event and a frequent focus of patient safety and quality improvement projects. This pediatric ICU implemented a colored alert system based on fall risk assessments for all admitted patients.

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