The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety wishes you a happy and safe 4th of July!
To improve safety this weekend and throughout the year, this week’s must reads recommend the following actions:
1. Work Together
Working together can improve patient safety – that’s the message from The Ohio Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety network. Reports US News & World Report:
In a relatively unprecedented move for the times, in January 2009, the eight children’s hospitals in Ohio decided to band together with Cardinal Health Foundation and other business leaders to support an effort to improve care and decrease costs for pediatric patients in the state. Their mission: working together to eliminate serious harm across all children’s hospitals. To accomplish this task, they completely destroyed the previous box and built a new one with three radical foundations: agreement to have no competition regarding patient safety; complete transparency in data sharing around safety; and adoption of an “all teach all learn philosophy.” was born.
Working together can improve #patientsafety Click To Tweet2. Screen New Born Babies with Pulse Oximetry
Colorado joins other states in screening new borns with pulse oximetry:
Legislation passed this spring … [requires] a pulse oximetry test for all Colorado babies born at an elevation below 7,000 feet.
Colorado is one of the last states in the country to require the test, in part because of concerns that the state’s altitude would affect the screening, which measures blood oxygen levels using sensors placed on a newborn’s hand and foot.
Screen new born #babies with #pulseoximetry #patientsafety Click To Tweet3. Use a Care Dependency Scale for Identifying Patients at Risk for Pressure Ulcer
Risk assessment of patients is a patient safety and health outcomes improvement tool that helps identify at risk patients and assists with the allocation of resources. This is a feature that all of our healthcare panels have included in:
The Netherlands is using the Care Dependency Scale for identifying patients at risk for pressure ulcer. It distinguishes patients at risk for pressure ulcer development and those not at risk.
Use a Care Dependency Scale to identify #patients at risk for #bedsores #patientsafety Click To Tweet