The demand for, and acceptance of, telemedicine solutions to provide services has grown substantially in recent years as safety profiles for the services are being defined. This guideline examines its use in pregnancy-related care, discusses the benefits and suggests actions to ensure patient safety during these encounters such as development of appropriate metrics and methods for vital-sign monitoring.

This document shares goals and objectives to enhance use of automated dispensing devices for pharmacists, other practitioners, and information system professionals.

Although adverse events and near misses are common in health care, they are almost ubiquitously underreported. Barriers to reporting include health care provider fear of repercussions, insufficient integration of reporting systems into the electronic health record, and cultural factors. This new sentinel event alert explores how organizations can change their culture to promote reporting. It highlights bright spots: organizations that use a just culture approach to investigating errors, celebrate employees who report safety hazards, and whose leaders prioritize reporting. The Joint Commission proposes actions for all organizations to take, including developing incident reporting systems, promoting leadership buy-in, engaging in systemwide communication, and implementing transparent accountability structures. An Annual Perspective reviewed the context of the no-blame movement and the recent shift toward a framework of a just culture.

Despite improvements associated with health information technology (IT), consistently safe use has been difficult to achieve. This guideline describes the benefits and challenges associated with various components of health IT and suggests that enhanced interoperability and mandatory reporting for health IT errors are needed to improve safety.

This policy statement outlines recommendations to ensure that electronic prescribing systems are designed and implemented to be safe for use in pediatric settings.

The introduction of health information technology (IT) has resulted in various documented improvements in patient safety and care delivery. However, unintended consequences have also emerged, and the potential for health IT to cause harm is now well recognized. This report includes 10 recommendations for research, policy, industry, and clinician users. These broad guidelines are aimed at coordinating diverse efforts from different stakeholder groups to improve the safe and effective use of health IT. Previously, a 2011 Institute of Medicine report and an online AHRQ guide made recommendations concerning safe implementation of electronic health records. A previous AHRQ WebM&M perspective examines the benefits and challenges of available health IT systems.

This guideline describes human factors that contribute to medication errors and recommends tactics to improve medication safety, including computerized physician order entry and electronic prescribing.

This commentary suggests bar-code scanning as a tactic to improve reliability of the medication management process.

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Board developed this position paper to address the extraordinary growth in the adoption of health information technology (HIT). The paper provides wide reaching recommendations about contracts, education and ethics, best practices, marketing, and regulation and oversight of the industry.

Patients hospitalized with acute coronary syndromes or strokes are particularly vulnerable to medication errors, as many of these patients are elderly, have complex medication regimens, or are administered high-risk medications such as anticoagulants. This position paper from the American Heart Association reviews the specific types of medication errors in these patients, including dosing errors, administration of contraindicated medications, and errors of omission (failure to prescribe recommended therapies). The authors make specific, evidence-based recommendations for preventing medication errors in this patient population, including integrating pharmacists into inpatient teams and using computerized provider order entry and medication reconciliation to detect and prevent errors. A medication error in an acute coronary syndrome patient is illustrated in this AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

The Joint Commission issues Sentinel Event Alerts to highlight areas of high risk and to promote the rapid adoption of risk reduction strategies. Adherence to these recommendations is then assessed as part of Joint Commission accreditation surveys at health care organizations nationwide. This recently retired alert targets prevention of maternal death and highlights the need to manage blood pressure, pay attention to vital signs following cesarean delivery, and hemorrhage. The alert also provides recommendations around educational strategies, identifying specific clinical triggers for action, and conducting adequate risk assessments. As of September 2016, current guidance will be distributed by a new initiative. Please refer to the information link below for further details.