Making health care safer

The Annals of Internal Medicine have published a special edition reviewing the evidence supporting strategies to improve patient safety. The articles included in this issue are:

1. The top patient safety strategies that can be encouraged for adoption now promoting a culture of safety as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
2. In-facility delirium prevention programs as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
3. Patient safety strategies targeted at diagnostic errors: a systematic review 
4. Inpatient fall prevention programs as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
5. Medication reconciliation during transitions of care as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
6. Nurse–patient ratios as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
7. Preventing in-facility pressure ulcers as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
8. Rapid-response systems as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
9. Simulation exercises as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review
10. Hospital-initiated transitional care interventions as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review

Read the whole issue here.

Choosing the place of care

"This report has described how locations of outpatient attendance and inpatient admission have changed since the introduction of patient choice in 2006 and the expansion of independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) from 2007 onwards."

Choosing the place of care: the effect of patient choice on treatment location in England, 2003-2011
E Kelly, G Tetlow
Nuffield Trust
November 2012

Read more here.

Helping hospitals deliver better care: a new toolkit for quality improvement

"The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) contracted with a team of researchers from RAND and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), a large collection of academic medical centers, to develop a toolkit for hospitals to support their quality improvement efforts based on the AHRQ quality indicators."

Helping hospitals deliver better care: a new toolkit for quality improvement
RAND Health
May 2012

Read more here.

Access the toolkit here.