All Content

This investigation examined care coordination, screening and other factors that contributed to a patient death by suicide shortly after discharge from a Veteran’s Hospital. Event reporting, disclosure and evaluation gaps were identified as process weaknesses to be addressed. 

Missed diagnosis of a dangerous condition in utero, treatment errors, lack of response to concerns raised, and inadequate clinician expertise were among the contributing factors identified in this analysis of the death of a special needs infant at home. The 12 recommendations stemming from the investigation include improvements in disclosure support, clinician communication across facilities, and assignment of accountability when false and misleading statements are made during investigations.

Adverse events in long term care facilities are acerbated due to staffing, training and financial challenges. This report examined the costs of avoidable problems in long term care and suggests prevention strategies that center on workforce skill development and safety culture improvement.

This annual report summarizes never events in Maryland hospitals over the previous year. From July 2019-June 2020, reported pressure ulcers increased while treatment delays and surgery-related events decreased. The authors recommend several corrective actions to build on training and policy changes to guide improvement work, including improving team communication and use of hospital data to reduce delays.

This bill submits amendments to existing US federal law to strengthen state-organized efforts to improve health care-associated infection control efforts, pediatric safety initiatives, care transitions, reporting systems and antimicrobial stewardship programs.

Drug shortages result from a variety of systemic failures. This report identifies market demands and financial factors that disrupt medication production. The materials recommend development of shared mental models on the causes of medication shortages and how they affect patients. Legislative and pharmaceutical industry-level quality improvement strategies designed to address systemic weaknesses are reviewed.

This website for independent community pharmacy owners across the United Kingdom features both free and members-only guidance, reporting platforms, and document templates to support patient safety. It includes reporting tools and incident analysis reports for providers in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Topics covered in the communications include look-alike and sound-alike drugs, patient safety audits, and safe dispensing of liquid medications.

Programs are in place to address hospital discharge process gaps that contribute to readmissions. This report summarizes research on primary care perspectives on reducing readmissions. Interventions identified include automated alerting to primary care providers when patients are hospitalized and the patient-centered medical home model.

This analysis found that scheduling problems among patients seeking primary care from Veterans Affairs health systems continue to occur. The report outlines weaknesses in the data collected to measure and evaluate veterans' access to primary care and spotlights the need to develop and disseminate a comprehensive policy for Veterans Affairs schedulers to reduce risk of scheduling errors.

Misrepresentation of findings, either by accident or design, can result in ineffective use of resources and poor decision-making. This investigation found inconsistencies in the information reported by the Veterans Health Administration in the widely-publicized analysis discussing weaknesses in the organization that resulted in delayed care. The author calls for the assessment to be revisited to ensure conclusions and work toward improvement are verifiable to augment the safety and timeliness of care provided to veterans.

In this hearing Veterans Affairs leadership provide an update on the current investigation into data and scheduling manipulation in the VA system. The testimonies discuss the scope of the problem, suggest that the culture at the hospitals enabled record falsification to become normalized, and outline actions being taken to address weaknesses in processes and access to care.

A previous report by the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Inspector General found that many veterans at the Phoenix VA facility endured months-long waits for primary care appointments, due in part to inappropriate manipulation of the scheduling process so that the facility could appear to meet VA quality metrics. This follow-up report examined whether these delays led to patients experiencing preventable harm and further investigated the root causes of excessive wait times and the generalizability of the problem across the VA system. The investigators concluded that no deaths or serious harm could be directly attributed to the scheduling delays; however, the report uncovered many examples of poor quality care, including delayed diagnoses of cancer, preventable readmissions, and poor care coordination. It also appears that scheduling manipulation was rife throughout the system. The report strongly attributes the "corrosive culture" of the VA and its unresponsive leadership as major factors in the system's failure to address longstanding problems with access to care. Though the VA has achieved impressive accomplishments in providing high-quality care, the scheduling scandal has caused serious damage to its reputation. A recent commentary by Dr. Kenneth Kizer (who, as Undersecretary for Health in the VA, was widely credited for reforming the VA in the 1990s) and Dr. Ashish Jha recommends several reforms the VA should implement to transform its culture and restore its standards.

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.

The TeamSTEPPS program was developed to support effective communication and teamwork in health care. This curriculum offers training for participants to implement TeamSTEPPS in their organizations. The course includes evidence reviews, trainer guidance, measurement tools, and a pocket guide for frontline staff.

While implementation of health information technology (IT) is widely recommended, research has raised the concern that it may lead to unintended consequences on patient safety. This draft report explores key recommendations for ensuring the safe use of health IT, such as the establishment of a "Health IT Safety Center" to test, disseminate, and promote assessment tools. The comment submission period is now closed.

This publication summarizes findings from 12 projects that explored how health information technology can enhance management and quality of care for patients with complex conditions in the ambulatory setting.

This government report reveals the need for a policy to ensure that veterans' medication needs are safely managed during transitions between health care providers.

This Web site supports an initiative to reduce avoidable rehospitalizations by improving transitions in care and communication between multiple care sites. The program ran from May 2009 through June 2013.  

This report shares findings from a 5-year analysis of the state of health care in the United Kingdom. It reveals that while awareness of patient safety has improved since the first report in the series, the UK health system needs to be more consistent in its application of patient-centeredness concepts to fully promote quality.