Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to American Hospital Association.
Whether their projects target children with asthma; those whose working parents cannot afford health insurance, but do not quality for federal aid; or immigrants or poor elderly, the hospitals and health systems that won the 2006 NOVA Awards understand that collaboration with other organizations is the most effective way to achieve a community's health care goals.
Inventory how your organization is connecting to its community. Are you and your employees living your vision and mission?
The AHAs Environmental Assessment identifies emerging trends facing health care providers, consumers and stakeholders. Health care leaders can use it to understand their environment and analyze the effects these trends will have on their organizations.
The use of abbreviations, acronyms and symbols in prescribing and transcribing medication orders too often results in the misinterpretation of the order's intent. Busy health care practitioners often use these shortcuts to indicate drug names, dosages, the patient's condition and route of administration. The result can be omission errors, extra or improper doses, administering the wrong drug, or giving a drug in the wrong manner. Stopping the use of unapproved abbreviations, acronyms and symbols can go a long way toward preventing these errors, but that's proven difficult to accomplish. This briefing examines ways that hospitals can put an end to the practice.
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Bar code technology is hailed as a tool to prevent medication errors from occurring where they could cause the most harm--at the point of care. It provides an extra layer of protection for front-line caregivers and helps hospitals comply with Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' standards and patient safety goals. Specifically, it helps hospitals meet requirements to verify orders and patients before medication administration. It ensures that nurses administer the right drug to the right patient in the right dose at the right time and by the right route.
The U.S. drug supply is purportedly one fo the safest in the world and yet counterfeit medications do make their way to pharmacy shelves and into the hands of unsuspecting patients. The World Health Organization reports that about $35 million in counterfeit drugs are sold n the United States each year. Worldwide, between 6 percent and 10 percent of prescription drugs on the market are counterfeit, WHO estimates. The Food and Drug Administration conducted 22 investigations into counterfeit drugs in 2002 and again in 2003; that's up from an average of five investigations per year through the late 1990s. Counterfeit drugs can cause serious harm to patients, including allergic reactions, and deny them access to potentially life-saving treatments.
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Confusing drugs with similar names accounts for about 10 percent of all medication errors, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Last year, the American Pharmacists Association reported that there are more than 33,000 trademarked medication names in the United States and more than 9,000 generic names. The large number of medications--added to clinicians' heavy workloads, job stress, unfamiliarity with drug names and confusing, unclear orders, among other things--creates ample opportunity for confusion. A Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' National Patient Safety Goal requires that hospitals identify and annually review a list of look-alike and sound-alike drugs, at minimum, and take action to prevent errors involving the interchange of these drugs.
Small rural hospital pharmacies face ths same quality challenges as their large, urban counterparts. Yes, they often lack access to the necessary resources to address these issues. That's no minor problem. AHA Hospital Statistics 2006 reports that 2,003 (41 percent) of the nation's 4,919 community hospitals in 2004 were rural. And, as of Aug. 31, 2005, 1,141 hospitals in the United States are designated as critical access hospitals. People living in rural areas are less likely to have insurance and are by and large poorer than those who live in urban areas, according to the National Rural Health Association. The rural population is also older and tends to suffer from more chronic diseases than residents of urban areas. That adds to the challenge for small and rural hospitals. These facilities must treat complex medical cases with limited resources, often with minimal on-site pharmacy coverage.
CEOs play a pivotal role in driving the selection and implementation of clinical and information technology within their organizations. Lack of standardization is viewed as the biggest obstacle to clinical transformation.
What is it they say about the best-laid plans? They often go awry. It's the same with initiatives to make drug delivery in hospitals safer. An organization can analyze its procedures with the most sophisticated methods and squeeze out every possible chance for error, but the new design will mold with disuse if momentum is lost. There are many ways for an innovation to get derailed: lost enthusiasm, personnel changes, budget cuts. As they mature in the safety process, organizations have to be flexible but also stay firm in maintaining medication safety as a top priority. Keep safety initiatives alive by involving staff, "hardwiring" changes into the system and monitoring their progress well into the future.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The front-line workers in a hospital are its greatest resources, particularly when it comes to improving safety. After all, they know the crucial details about day-to-day operations and can offer innovative solutions to problems. But staff members don't always feel comfortable getting involved in change. To tap this hidden well of talent, hospitals leaders should train staff in systems thinking, cultivate a culture of safety and make it easy for employees to contribute their ideas.
This year's AHA Environmental Assessment analyzes the trends and issues that are likely to affect the health care delivery system. Compiled from more than 30 sources, the Environmental Assessment looks at the present to plan for the future.
The medication-use system in hospitals is inherently complex. There can be more than 100 steps from the time a prescription is written to the time a patient receives the medication. Technology has the potential to reduce medication errors by reducing complexity, avoiding over-reliance on memory, simplifying key processes, and, if designed and implemented properly, increasing efficiency. It can also be a cost-effective tool for improving quality. This briefing examines issues in selection and implementation automation.
When hospitals examine the way caregivers prescribe and deliver medications, it is easy to overlook a key participant in the process: the patient. And yet, patients can be invaluable partners in the drive to maintain safety. Educating consumers about what to expect in the hospital and how to recognize a problem adds a layer to the safety effort.