Electronic health record (EHR) system issues degrade the data sharing and communication needed to inform safe patient care. This newspaper feature discusses problems with the new Veterans Affairs EHR system from the patient and family perspective in the context of diagnostic and treatment delay.

Health literacy efforts address challenges related to both language and effective communication tactics. This story discussed how lack of language and information clarity reduced patient education effectiveness during the pandemic and highlights several efforts to address them including information product translation services.

Delays and mistakes in health care for distinct patient populations hold improvement lessons for the broader system. This news story highlights problems in correctional system cancer diagnoses and treatment that may indicate other types of prison care delivery problems.

Patients with rare diseases present diagnostic challenges. This article introduces the potential for improvements in diagnosis that telemedicine brings to the process through enabling access to appropriate expertise previously limited by geography. 

Implicit biases are known to impact effective diagnosis. This story highlights how dismissed concerns resulted in a delay in cancer diagnosis that contributed to the death of a young woman. 

Patients with cancer and other chronic disorder treatment needs have been negatively affected by the restructuring of services to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. This story discusses company strategies to prepare to virtually support patients with a range of conditions. The author shares communication and support tactics to keep patients safe until they can get their appointments.

Inconsistent patient name entry practices in electronic health records can contribute to wrong-patient errors. This magazine article reports on the complex nature of addressing patient-matching discrepancies as an economic, privacy, and technical problem. Improvement strategies include the development and adoption of a national identification program and biometric technology. A WebM&M commentary discussed problems associated with name similarities in the electronic patient record.

Structured handoffs can reduce communication problems that contribute to medical error. This magazine article reports on how I-PASS implementation can help enhance the quality and completeness of handoffs, highlights the need for pharmacists to be more engaged in handoff improvement, and offers insights for enhancing their role in the process. In a past PSNet interview, Dr. Amy Starmer discussed the implementation and findings of the landmark I-PASS study.

Medication errors continue to be a worldwide patient safety challenge that requires both systems and individual practice strategies for improvement. This magazine article describes how pharmacists can address failures associated with processing, dosing, care transitions, and information sharing to prevent medication errors.

Transitions in care between inpatient and outpatient settings are an increasing concern for patient safety. Reporting on a fatal medication error that was missed by a patient's pharmacist and home health nurses, this newspaper article discusses various risks associated with hospital-to-home transitions such as insufficient case management and communication.

This article describes an intervention that trained health coaches to use mobile technology to assess the health status of recently discharged Medicare patients, first during an in-home visit 48 hours after leaving the hospital and then with weekly phone calls over a 3-week period. The program resulted in decreased readmission rates and significant cost savings.

This newsletter article details the characteristics of successful community liaison programs, which facilitate transitions from hospital to home, and describes how such programs can reduce the risk of medication discrepancies.

This newspaper article reports on how transition coaches can help improve transfer and discharge communication to prevent readmissions.

This newspaper article reports on gaps in communication and a missed sepsis diagnosis that led to a patient's death.

This news article uses an example of a preventable readmission to illustrate how ineffective communication during care transitions can affect patients after hospital discharge.