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Health inequities among people of color are the result of multiple systemic and clinician factors. This study shows Black and Hispanic/Latino patients who experience racism in healthcare, report worse views on the quality of their care and lower trust in their clinicians. These findings suggest that eliminating racism at the organization and clinician level may improve quality of care for patients of color.

Cognitive biases can impede decision-making and lead to poor care. This article summarizes the common types of cognitive errors and biases and highlights how cognitive biases can contribute to diagnostic errors. The authors apply these common types of errors and biases in four case examples and discuss how to mitigate these biases during the diagnostic process. 

Transgender patients who experience or perceive bias when receiving care may avoid or delay seeking care in the future. In this study, transgender patients reported on their experiences in viewing their electronic health record (EHR). In line with previous studies, transgender patients reported experiencing harms in several ways, such as providers using the wrong pronouns, wrong name, or wrong gender marker. The structure of the EHR (e.g., no separate fields for sex and gender) itself also created barriers to quality care.

Healthcare organizations use multiple proactive and reactive methods of investigating and preventing adverse events. This study combined proactive and reactive risk assessments into a Combined Proactive Risk Assessment (CPRA) to identify risks not detected by one method on its own. The four steps of CPRA are illustrated using the example of outpatient blood draws in the Veterans Health Administration.

Parent or caregiver limited English proficiency (LPE) has been associated with increased risk of their children experiencing adverse events. In this study, limited English proficiency was associated with lower odds of speaking up or asking questions when something does not appear right with their child’s care. Recommendations for improving communication with limited English proficiency patients and families are presented.

Families and caregivers play an important role in patient safety. This study analyzed incident report data and found that behavior from families and caregivers visiting a patient increased the risk of patient harm in 36% of cases and decreased the risk of harm in the remaining 64% of cases. Certain visitor behaviors (such as moving the patient) increased patient harm, including falls and medication-related events. Other behaviors, such as communicating with healthcare staff, decreased patient harm.

Effective handoff communication is a key indicator of safe patient care. These authors outline a new model for handoff communication, integrating three theoretical frameworks addressing relevant inputs (i.e., individual organizational, environmental factors), mediators (e.g., communication, leadership), outcomes (e.g., patient, provider, teamwork, and organizational outcomes), and adaptation loops.

Concern for improved prescribing of opiates motivated the development of programs and policies that have inadvertently caused new problems. This commentary discusses the impact of nonopioid use during surgery as a patient preference. It discusses the potential for adverse impacts of the strategy while recognizing the unique situation of perioperative use of pain medications.

AHRQ’s Hospital Survey on Patient Safety (SOPS) is used by hundreds of hospitals in the US to assess hospital patient safety culture. This study describes the development and testing of a “workplace safety supplement,” intended to be used in conjunction with the SOPS to assess how organizational culture supports workplace safety. Included survey items measured perceptions around protection from workplace hazards; moving, transferring, or lifting patients; workplace aggression; management and leadership support for workplace safety; and workplace safety reporting.

Hospital readmission rates are an important indicator of patient safety. This cross-sectional study examined whether patients admitted to hospitals with high readmission rates also had higher risks of in-hospital adverse events. Based on a sample of over 46,000 Medicare patients with pneumonia discharged between July 2010 and December 2019 and linked to Medicare adverse event data, researchers found that patients admitted to hospitals with high all-cause readmission rates were more likely to experience an adverse event during their admission.

Achieving diagnostic safety requires multidisciplinary approaches. Based on interviews with safety leaders across the United States, this article discusses how different organizations approach diagnostic safety. Respondents discuss barriers to implementing diagnostic safety activities as well as strategies to overcome barriers, highlighting the role of patient engagement and dedicated diagnostic safety champions.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) use a variety of quality indicators to measure and rank hospital performance. In this study, researchers analyzed the variance between AHRQ pediatric quality indicators and CMS hospital-acquired condition indicators and evaluated the use of alternative composite scores. The researchers identified substantial within-hospital variation across the indicators and could not identify a single composite measure capable of capturing all of the variance observed across the broad range of outcomes. The authors call for additional research to identify meaningful approaches to performance ranking for children’s hospitals.