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Patient Safety: Prevention of
Medical Errors
Public safety has been a major health care concern
by many individuals and groups, i.e. regulators, patients, families
and recently the media. Both the federal and state governments have
made patient safety a priority in providing quality care. Patients
have a right to expect a safe environment. One component to ensure
this is education. The websites listed will provide an introduction
to learning about the safety issues facing the health care industry.
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- American
Medical Association: Patient Safety
Dedicated to the health of America and is addressing current health
issues.
- Anesthesia Patient
Safety Foundation
Fostering investigations that will provide a better understanding of
preventable anesthetic injuries, encourage programs that will reduce
the number of anesthetic injuries, and promote national and international
communication of information and ideas about the causes and prevention
of anesthetic injuries.
- Center on Patient
Safety
Mission is to advance and support the professional practice of pharmacists
in hospitals and health systems and serve as their collective voice
on issues related to medication use and public health.
- Food and Drug Administration
Promotes and protects the public health by helping safe and effective
products reach the market in a timely way, and monitoring products for
continued safety after they are in use. Our work is a blending of law
and science aimed at protecting consumers.
- Health Care: Medical
Errors & Patient Safety
Contains information about medical errors, a leading health problem,
and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's efforts to reduce
medical errors and improve patient safety.
- Institute For Safe Medication Practices
Provides an independent review of medication errors that have been voluntarily
submitted by practitioners to a national Medication Errors Reporting
Program (MERP) operated by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) in the
USA. Information from the reports may be used by USP to impact on drug
standards. All information derived from the MERP is shared with the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and pharmaceutical companies
whose products are mentioned in reports.
- Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Healthcare Organizations
Evaluates and accredits nearly 18,000 health care organizations and
programs in the United States. An independent, not-for-profit organization,
JCAHO is the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting
body in health care.
- Med Errors.com
Provides information on medication errors and adverse drug events in
hospitals, problems that affect millions of Americans each year-- patients,
families, and clinicians.
- Medical Error Reduction
and Patient Safety
Offers information on medical error reduction, patient safety quality
improvement solutions for consumers and providers. Healthcare adverse,
sentinel events resource with root cause analysis focus. Offers a rapid
consultation service.
- National Patient Safety Foundation
Mission of the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) is to improve
measurably patient safety in the delivery of health care.
- National Quality Forum
Created to develop and implement a national strategy for health care
quality measurement and reporting. A shared sense of urgency about the
impact of health care quality on patient outcomes, workforce productivity,
and health care costs prompted leaders in the public and private sectors
to create the National Quality Forum as a mechanism to bring about national
change.
- Nephron Information
Center
Provides information on current news, weather and safety reports. Allows
patient, professionals and the public access to the vast kidney disease
resources on the Web.
- Patient Safety
Act of 1997, HR 1165
Read the Patient Safety Act of 1997, HR 1165, introduced by Maurice
Hinchey (D-NY) that focuses on major safety, quality, and workforce
issues for nurses employed by health care institutions and their patients
who received care in those institutions.
- Patient Safety Center
of Inquiry
Focus of this Center is safe mobility. Two goals for this center are:
(1) To promote personal freedom and safety for frail elderly and persons
with disabilities, across the continuum of care and (2) To build a "culture
of safety" to support clinicians in providing safe patient care
and safe working environments. The Department of Veteran's Affairs funded
the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital, Tampa to establish a VISN 8 Patient
Safety Center of Inquiry. The Center was funded for three years. Three
other Centers, organized under the VA National Patient Safety Center,
are in White Plains (VT), Cincinnati (OH), and Palo Alto (CA).
- Patient
Safety Feature of the Virtual Learning Center
Provides patient safety lessons that are gleaned from adverse events
that may have already happened, or from "accidents that could happen".
Implementation of recommended system redesigns will safeguard against
the occurrence of these accidents, thus improving patient safety. As
of 2/7/02 there are 63 Patient Safety Lessons In The Virtual Learning
Center.
- Patient Safety Institute (PSI)
Combines the power of technology and the strength of patient-provider
relationships to improve care and lower the costs of healthcare. In
developing the PSI system, this non-profit, collaborative and voluntary
initiative has patients, physicians and hospitals united to provide
strictly confidential, real time access to critical information at the
point of care.
- Patient Safety Resources:
Behavior-based solutions BST®, Inc.
Presents behavior-based performance improvement by Behavioral Science
Technology®, BST® that includes behavioral safety, quality,
customer service, and leadership enhancement. This site provides background,
news, discussion groups and resources for sustained, continuous behavioral
improvement.
- Patient
Safety Statistics: Legal Information
Provides the general public with easily accessible legal and medical
material. This is done in an effort to help consumers better understand
any injury or medical condition that has negatively impacted their lives,
along with their legal rights. InjuryBoard.com was launched in May of
2001 and is the first comprehensive personal injury web site of its
kind.
- Professionals
and Patient Safety: How to Positively Influence Change
Provides some of the most frequently seen errors and ways HIM professionals
can contribute to a downturn in the number of adverse incidents attributable
to problems involving documentation or information availability.
- Talk About Prescriptions:
National Council on Patient Information and Education
Designed to help consumers make sound decisions about a very important,
and sometimes frequent, part of good health: use of medicines. Two out
of three doctor visits end with a prescription being written. While
taking medicines is very common, it's not always easy to take them correctly.
Last Reviewed 3/19/02
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