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Handoffs between prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) providers and hospital emergency departments (EDs) can be suboptimal, which increases patient harm potential. This interim report examines National Health Service discharge delays. It suggests a systemic approach is needed to address flow and capacity factors that contribute to ineffective and unsafe interfacility discharge and transfer.

Pre-hospital emergency care can be vulnerable to timing, information, and task failures that compromise safety. This investigation explores how computerized decision support system access played a roles in an emergency call-center program incident where erroneous information was transmitted to a pregnant patient that contributed to infant harm.

Patient malnutrition is an underrecognized threat to patient safety. This report provides a comprehensive evidence analysis on the patient malnutrition literature, the relationship of in-hospital malnutrition to patient harm across patient groups and tactics for measurement of the problem to design and assess the impact of interventions.

This report summarizes 2007 data on quality and safety issues in Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes and finds that 17% of the organizations were cited for care deficiencies that could result in harm to residents.

This report suggests that a systems approach to child social services in Great Britain would facilitate a fair and open culture and encourage learning from near misses.