Fill in the blank: Medication storage areas should be designed to address at least three things. One is to ensure the stability and integrity of the medications being stored. The second is to prevent ...

The most recent round of administrative penalties for hospital deficiencies constituting immediate jeopardy includes two patient falls resulting in deaths, a wrong-site surgery, and a retained surgica...

The latest round of scores that measure rates of errors and infections, indicators of safe practices, shows an increase in the number of hospitals that earned the lowest score. Leapfrog's CEO Leah Bin...

Researchers estimate that each additional nurse-hour per patient day is associated with 10% lower odds of receiving penalties under The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's Hospital Readmissio...

As of March 2013, more than 85% of eligible hospitals are participating in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records (EHR) Incentive Programs, and more than 75% have received incentive payme...

A new collaborative is bringing the meaningful use of checklists to the ambulatory and outpatient setting. The goal is to establish "zero harm," and a key effort in this is to effectively im...

The hospital is a large, multifaceted organism with thousands of ­moving parts within dozens of units that are often separated by wings, streets, and buildings. The physical barriers, however, are...

Everyone in healthcare knows about the struggles of medication reconciliation and its impact on patient safety and care. The Joint Commission takes notice, building standards and safety goals around s...

Each hospital is required to have a formal process to evaluate whether a drug should be added to the formulary. This process should include specific criteria for evaluating each drug. What criteria is...

In March 2013, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) began presenting the results of its random audits for HIPAA and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act compliance. To date, ...