Hospitals Still Not Following Safety Recommendatons

reprinted from Nursing Spectrum, Greater Philadelphia Tri-State, Jan 16, 2006

Hospitals still don't come close to meeting Institute of Medicine Recommendations for patient safety systems, which, six years after the organization's landmark report on patient saftey, "is cause for great concern" the Journal of the American Medical Association says in its Dec. 14 issue. "Efforts for improvement must be accelerated," the Journal said. Extensive surveys of 197 hospitals in Utah and Missouri, both in 2002 and 2004, showed the number of hopsitals with mechanisms for voluntary reporting of errors rose to 69.9% in 2004, up 9% from 2000. Thirty-four percent of hospitals have fully implemented computerized physician order-entry systems, up just 1% from 2002, the journal said. Among measures the surveys considered were computerized physician order-entry systems, computerized test results, assessments of adverse effects, patient-safety policies, and use of data in patient-safety programs.

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