Care coordination failures reduce the effectiveness of communication, information transfer, and patient monitoring to the determent of safety. This report examines the current state of interfacility transfers in 45 veteran facilities to find that, while process requirements were basically met, improvements could be made to medication list transfer, nursing communication, and general service evaluation.

 Cancer test communication failures can contribute to physical, emotional, and financial patient harm. This report examines missed opportunities made by multiple clinicians involved in the care of a patient with prostate cancer who then died from metastasized disease Seven recommendations are included for improving abnormal test result communication and error management at the facility.

This annual report summarizes never events in Maryland hospitals over the previous year. From July 2020-June 2021, reported events increased due to the COVID pandemic. Pressure injuries increased and patient deaths from preventable medical errors doubled in the time period. The authors recommend several corrective actions to build on training and policy changes to guide improvement work, including engaging leadership in safety work and application of high-reliability concepts to enhance safety culture.

Women have been affected by implicit bias that undermines the safety of their care and trust in the medical system. This book shares the history anchoring the mindsets driving ineffective care for women and a discussion of the author’s long-term lupus misdiagnosis.

Effective integration of health information systems supports decision making and treatment coordination across practice settings. This report examines how gaps in information sharing can affect behavioral health care. The authors discuss the potential for diagnostic improvement through information system connections between primary care and behavioral health programs.

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. 

Discontinuities in mental health care are a patient safety concern. This report analyzes how documentation gaps, medication reconciliation problems, and poor care coordination contributed to the suicide of a patient who presented at an emergency room, was screened there, and referred to a clinic for further care that was not completed.

Patient suicide is a never event. This report analyzes the death of a veteran after presenting at an emergency room with suicidal ideation. The analysis found lack of both suicide prevention policy adherence and appropriate assessment, as well as a lack concern for the patient’s condition contributed to the failure.   

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.

Surgical specimen and laboratory process problems can affect diagnosis. This publication examines factors that contribute to errors across the surgical pathology process and reviews strategies to reduce their impact on care. Chapters discuss areas of focus to encourage process improvement and error response, such as information technology, specimen tracking, root cause analysis, and disclosure.

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.

Although health information technology was implemented to improve safety, it has resulted in unintended consequences such as clinician burnout and perpetuation of incorrect information. This publication explores the barriers to achieving the interoperability needed to build a robust digital infrastructure that will seamlessly and reliably share information across the complex system of health care. The report advocates for adjusting purchasing behaviors to focus less on the price and features of each product and to instead look for interoperable technologies. The report outlines five action priorities to guide leadership decision-making around procurement, including championing systemwide interoperability and identifying goals and requirements. A PSNet interview discussed potential consequences of the digitization of health care.

Transitions are known to be vulnerable to communication errors. This toolkit focuses on patient transitions between ambulatory care environments and encourages staff to engage patients and families in their care to prevent errors during care transitions.

Poor communication can contribute to medical error, but incident analysis often fails to identify particular elements of communication associated with the error. This publication discusses factors that influence communication in the medical care process and uses case studies to illustrate how effective communication can help prevent and address close calls and adverse events.

Checklists are a widely accepted strategy to improve communication and standardize processes to support reliability. This publication includes information on what makes a checklist useful and provides numerous checklist templates that focus on tasks in areas such as medication management, performance improvement, and infection control that can be implemented in various settings.

This toolkit provides information for hospitals to help reduce preventable readmissions among Medicaid patients. Building on hospital experience with utilizing the materials since 2014, this updated guide explains how to determine root causes for readmissions, evaluate existing interventions, develop a set of improvement strategies, and optimize care transition processes.

Patient safety in ambulatory care is receiving increased attention. This guide includes case studies that explore how Open Notes, team-based care delivery, and patient and family advisory committees have shown promise as patient engagement and safety improvement mechanisms in primary care settings.

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.