All Content

This report summarizes patient safety improvement work in the state of Pennsylvania and reviews the 2021 activities of the Patient Safety Authority, including the Agency's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, video programs, liaison efforts, publication programs, and the launch of a new learning management system.

Nursing homes face significant patient safety challenges, and these challenges became more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. This report identifies key issues in the delivery of care for nursing home residents and provides recommendations to strengthen the quality and safety of care delivery, such as improved working conditions, enhanced minimum staffing standards, improving quality measurement, and strengthening emergency preparedness.

The impact of nursing home inspections to ensure the quality and safety of the service environment is lacking. Weaknesses in the process became more explicit as poor long-term care infection control was determined to be a contributor to the early spread of COVID amongst nursing home residents. This announcement outlines a targeted inspection initiative to assess whether organizations previously sited have made progress toward improving workforce safety.

Health information technologies (HIT) and advanced learning systems, if poorly designed, used, maintained, integrated, or accessed, harbor the potential for failure across the systems they support. This legal discussion argues for federal standards to establish levels of accountability for physicians who use HIT systems and assign liability, should use result in patient harm.

Overuse of antibiotics has been common in nursing homes; therefore, antibiotic stewardship programs (ASPs) have been emphasized by experts. To assist facilities, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use developed programs and a toolkit to improve the appropriate use of antibiotics. This quality improvement program found that a focused educational initiative to establish ASPs in nursing homes was associated with reduction in antibiotic use in those facilities with high levels of engagement.

In this annual publication, AHRQ reviews the results of the National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report. This 2021 report highlights that a wide range of quality measures have shown improvement in quality, access, and cost.

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) challenge safety in long-term care. This toolkit highlights multidisciplinary approaches to reducing HAIs and teaching tools focused on distinct audiences across the continuum to share principles and tactics supporting improvement.

The use of antibiotics should be monitored to reduce the potential for infection in care facilities. This toolkit outlines offers a methodology for launching or invigorating an antibiotic stewardship program. Designed to align with four time elements of antibiotic therapy, its supports processes that enable safety for nursing home residents.

This notice announces a call for comments on an information collection project drawing from the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP). This project will support the implementation of targeted hospital-acquired infection improvement initiatives in intensive care units, long term care and surgical environments to reduce the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The process for submitting comments is now closed.