Quality Improvement

Checklist Program Reduces Infections, Saves Lives and Money

A quality improvement program that saves lives by dramatically reducing potentially lethal bloodstream infections in hospital intensive-care units across the state of Michigan also saves those hospitals an average of $1.1 million a year, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. ...More
August 22, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare Aims to Reduce Risk of Wrong-Site Surgery

Healthcare professionals and patients all agree that wrong-site surgery is a serious and preventable adverse event that should never happen. Although reporting is not mandatory in most states, some estimates put the national incidence rate, which includes wrong patient, ...More
June 29, 2011
Posted in News
Up to $500 Million in Affordable Care Act Funding Will Help Health Providers Improve Care

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that up to $500 million in Partnership for Patients funding will be available to help hospitals, healthcare provider organizations and others improve care and stop millions of preventable injuries and ...More
June 22, 2011
Posted in News
AAMI Offers Sterile Processing Benchmarking Tool

The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) has developed a new tool that will help sterile processing departments measure their performance against similar departments across the country. Sterile Processing Benchmarks addresses a gaping need in ...More
June 7, 2011
Posted in News, Disinfection & Sterilization
Checklists, Culture of Accountability are Reinvigorating the Patient Safety Movement

The use of a medical or surgical checklist is now a familiar activity for many healthcare professionals, but experts are asking if they are impacting patient outcomes and contributing to patient safety in a meaningful way. And now, the data from a new study are indicating ...More
April 18, 2011
Posted in Articles
Ondine to Participate in Vancouver General Hospital Infection Control Quality Improvement Project

Ondine Biomedical Inc. announces that it has agreed to supply Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) with Ondine's MRSAid™ Photodisinfection System for nasal pathogen decolonization as part of a 13-month infection control quality improvement project (QIP) being conducted at the ...More
April 15, 2011
Posted in News
APIC Supports HHS "Partnership for Patients" Initiative

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) has issued a statement strongly supporting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recently announced Partnership for Patients initiative. The statement is as follows: "APIC shares the ...More
April 13, 2011
Posted in News
Unreliable Outcomes Measures Hamper Efforts to Assure Better, Safer Care

With a push to make hospitals and doctors more accountable for health care quality, more attention must be paid to the accuracy and reliability of measures used to evaluate caregivers, says a prominent Johns Hopkins patient safety expert. Writing in the April issue of the ...More
April 8, 2011
Posted in News
APIC Issues Statement in Response to the National Quality Strategy

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) says it supports the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 'sdevelopment of the National Quality Strategy aimed at improving the quality of healthcare. The top priority advanced by ...More
March 22, 2011
Posted in News
Experts Agree U.S. Needs to Step Up Infection Control Efforts, Starting With Hand Hygiene Practices

U.S. healthcare facilities are grossly underperforming in hand hygiene compliance, which could impact healthcare-associated infections and patient safety, said two of the world's foremost experts on infection prevention and hand hygiene. Speaking last week before more than ...More
March 17, 2011
Posted in News, Hand Hygiene