Several prestigious U.S. hospitals are promoting alternative therapy treatments that have little to no scientific backing, likely due to consumer demand. Excerpt: “They’re among the nation’s premier medical centers, at the leading edge of scientific research. Yet hospitals affiliated with Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and other top medical research centers also aggressively promote alternative therapies […]
Pre-Operative Questions May Improve Surgical Decision Making for Older Adults
Research shows question prompt lists (QPLs) could help improve patient engagement and reduce postoperative treatment regret and conflict about additional treatments. Excerpt: “About 500,000 Americans aged 65 and older will have a high-risk operation, such as heart bypass or major cancer surgery, each year.” “Surgeons play an important role helping patients make preference-sensitive decisions, […]
Evidence Suggests Changes in Hospital Design May Improve Patient Outcomes
Research shows that having fewer shared patient rooms, decentralizing nursing stations, reducing noise, and providing nature views lead to shorter patient stays. Excerpt: “Hospitals are among the most expensive facilities to build, with complex infrastructures, technologies, regulations and safety codes. But evidence suggests we’ve been building them all wrong — and that the deficiencies aren’t […]
RTLS Technology Improved Care and Reduced Risk at Hospitals
Real-time Location System (RTLS) technology has improved bed management, lowered wait times, and reduced risks of wandering patients. Real-time patient tracking allowed faster bed turnaround, and increased patient flow, resulting in reduced waits. Reduced wandering increased patient safety and reduced risks of accidents. Excerpt: “Technology has brought about many improvements in health care that have […]
Study of Patient Involvement to Improve Patient Safety
Trial demonstrated patient reporting and feedback has potential to be effective in reducing patient harm. Study was conducted in 33 hospital wards across five hospitals in the U.K. Excerpt: “Rates of adverse events during hospitalisation have been estimated at between 3% and 16% globally and, despite increasing attention, have demonstrated very little improvement over the […]
Quality Improvement Could Reduce Deaths after ED Discharge
10,093 patients die per year within 7 days of discharge from an Emergency Department (ED), the study suggests that quality improvement could reduce the number Leading causes of post-discharge death were atherosclerotic heart disease (13.6%), acute myocardial infarction (10.3%), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (9.6%) Excerpt: “A growing number of patients visit emergency departments […]
Standardizing the Patient Handoff Process Might Improve Patient Outcomes
Standardizing communication and education processes when teams handoff patients to other teams could help improve outcomes. Teaching hospitals’ processes for end-of-rotation handoff vary greatly. Excerpt: “Care transitions — when one doctor or medical team takes over for another — have increasingly been recognized as a vital but challenging aspect of medical care. Typically, at the […]
Providers Could Gain Time and Cost Savings by Reducing Manual Transactions
If medical and dental providers transitioned to electronic business transactions, they could realize significant labor hour and cost savings. Excerpt: “Widespread adoption of electronic business transactions in healthcare continues to grow but a significant opportunity for $9.4B in savings remains, according to new data released today in the 2016 CAQH Index. Conducting resource-intensive manual transactions […]
Executing Plan–Do–Study–Act Cycles in Healthcare
PDSA cycles are the building blocks of healthcare improvement, but need to be embraced as a scientific method that includes a prediction and test of outcome. Each PDSA cycle combines a prediction of outcome and a hypothesis test, and should be used to modify the prediction after every cycle. Excerpt: “Plan-do–study–act (PDSA) cycles are the […]