Patient Safety & Outcomes

Most people are not familiar with the value hospice can provide in the last months, weeks or days of life. There is no need to be afraid of hospice, and healthcare providers should encourage their patients to consider these services.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists is recognizing annual Patient Safety Awareness Week from March 3 to 9 to educate patients on the importance of physician-led care.

Physicians at Allied Anesthesia in Orange, Calif., have been working for the past year to perfect a "Patient Ready Protocol" to improve pre-op coordination, eliminate unnecessary tests and reduce the number of surgical delays and cancellations.

Hospital admission rates from the emergency department varied significantly among emergency physicians and hospitals in a single health system, according to a study in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Patients undergoing minor surgeries experienced disproportionately high levels of pain, according to researchers who examined more than 50,000 pain responses for 179 types of surgery, according to News-Medical.  

Hamilton Medical notified customers of a malfunction with its HAMILTON-TI ventilators with software versions 1.1.2 and lower in which the correct amount of oxygen may be miscalculated, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Here are six studies on emergency department visits from the past month, beginning with the most recent.

The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert for opioid overuse consequences and urged hospitals to take measures to avoid patient complications and death, according to The Hospitalist.

T-System, an emergency medicine solutions company, has released a free flu documentation template to help hospitals manage increased emergency department volume due to high influenza rates.

Here are 40 benchmarks on emergency department performance that T-System compiled from 62 hospitals using T SystemEV, an ED electronic health record.