While the industry is no longer in denial about the high incidence of medical errors, hospital executives are struggling with how to best incorporate patient safety
initiatives. A patient safety partnership, announced earlier this month, takes a stab at this issue with a suite of software programs. Safety-Centered Solutions and Phoenix
Healthcare Management Services, a sister company of VHA Georgia, formed an alliance that combines SCS's patient safety measurement systems with Phoenix's healthcare services. The
partnership allows hospitals to:
- track medical errors on a system-wide basis in more than 1,100 areas of care;
- compare patient safety performance regionally and nationally; and
- conduct educational seminars on medical error prevention.
(Safety-Centered Solutions, http://scCARE.com)
In other patient safety news, Aetna U.S. Healthcare recently launched a medical error reduction campaign targeting its healthcare providers. The campaign integrates medical and
pharmacy data to help physicians prevent harmful drug interactions and encourage them to use hand-held prescribing devices to reduce errors resulting from handwriting mistakes. In
addition, the health plan and the Aetna Foundation awarded $840,000 in grants to researchers at five academic institutions to study medication error reductions last week. The
grant recipients are the University of Washington, Emory University, the University of Alabama, the University of Texas and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
(Aetna, http://aetnaushc.com)