The idea of the “five rights” for medication safety has been taught in nursing school since at least World War II, used as a memory tool that nurses should rely on to administer medications safely. Even though no one can identify where the five rights came from, the idea is embedded in medication safety programs and appears frequently in error reports submitted to ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization. As our guest Susan Paparella, Vice President, Services, Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), points out, the five rights are inadequate as a safety tool. Because they do not a ..read more

In the latest episode of our podcast, we speak to Karen Garvey, Vice President, Safety and Clinical Risk Management, and J.D. Buchert, Workplace Safety Manager, Parkland Health (Dallas, Texas). They describe their data-driven approach to identifying and combatting workplace violence, including the importance of keeping frontline staff involved in and aware of those efforts ..read more

Providing equitable care for a diverse population requires providers to meet patients where they are—including if they are experiencing homelessness. In this episode, Dr. Jose Ramos, of Pomona Valley Health Centers, describes his team’s outreach efforts to homeless individuals, how those efforts were affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and strategies for implementing similar programs elsewhere ..read more

In this episode, we talk with our guest, Tom McCormick, Vice President, Patient Accounting, at Penn Medicine, about adjusting staffing patterns in the patient accounting department during the COVID-19 pandemic. He shares his perspective on how staff roles changed, how the shift to remote work had expected and unexpected effects, and how all of it tied back to providing for patient and staff safety ..read more

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report. The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions. In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Thomas Jefferson Universi ..read more

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report. The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions. In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Camden Coalition of Healt ..read more

This episode is part of a series regarding the ECRI and the ISMP Patient Safety Organization's (PSO) annual Deep Dive report. The 2021 Deep Dive report focuses on issues of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare. Research has repeatedly confirmed that members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience disparities in care, including having an increased risk of being uninsured or underinsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes for treatable and preventable conditions. In this episode, we’re talking to guests from Cooper University Health ..read more

Today, more than a year into the COVID pandemic, we're talking about the process of disaster recovery. While much has been written over the past year about the ways in which the national and global healthcare systems prepared (or could have prepared) for the pandemic, and should prepare for the next one, not as much attention has been paid to how individual providers and organizations will recover from the past year's trauma. In this episode, our guest reminds us that challenges like these can also be viewed as opportunities—and we'll discuss how healthcare providers can turn that attitude int ..read more

With access to COVID-19 vaccines now more widespread throughout the United States, but still only available under emergency use authorization, employers are wrestling with questions about whether to mandate that their staff received the vaccine. Perhaps, no industry has a more fraught decisions than Aging Services. There remains a significant gap between vaccination rates among staff and residents, and older adults remain one of the most vulnerable populations to COVID-19. In today’s episode, we’ll review the current state of COVID vaccinations in Aging Services, talk about strategies for incr ..read more

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally designated ECRI as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) in 2008. Since then, our PSO has studied nearly 4 million adverse events and near misses from over 1,400 healthcare providers nationwide across acute, ambulatory, and aging services. In this episode, we'll explore what it means to be and participate in a PSO and the evidence for how participation can benefit patient safety, and we'll briefly review some of the legal challenges to PSO protections ..read more