All Content

The Leapfrog Group, a consortium of public and private employers who purchase health care for more than 30 million Americans, strives to improve patient safety through encouraging hospitals to implement the National Quality Forum's safe practices and 3 other key safety interventions (including computerized provider order entry). More than 1200 hospitals nationwide have joined the Leapfrog Group's effort to date. However, this analysis of hospital-level trauma outcomes found essentially no relationship between adoption of the Leapfrog interventions and outcomes for trauma patients. This study's results mirror the findings of a prior study that found no improvement in mortality at Leapfrog hospitals for a broad range of inpatient diagnoses.

This article discusses how several health care organizations used health information technology to improve organizational transparency.

Computerized reminders to renew orders for physical restraints were combined with a forcing function—denial of computer access until the order was completed—in this trial conducted in an emergency department. Although clinician ordering behavior improved, no significant improvement was found in the amount of time patients spent in restraints.

The authors discuss the financial incentives of improving patient outcomes as the business case for patient safety.