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Office Patient Safety Resources

Medication Safety in Community Pharmacies and Outpatient Settings 

Three new online resources funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and developed by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) can help community pharmacies and outpatient settings improve medication safety and protect patients from the adverse effects of medication errors.

  • High-Alert Medications Consumer Leaflets are patient education checklists developed during a study of the impact of community pharmacies that counseled consumers who picked up prescriptions for certain high-alert medications including warfarin, fentanyl patches, and more.
  • Assessing Barcode Verification System Readiness in Community Pharmacies is a free tool that helps community pharmacies assess their readiness and prepare for future implementation of a barcode product verification system.
  • High-Alert Medication Modeling and Error-Reduction Scorecards [HAMMERS™] is a free tool designed to help community pharmacies identify their unique set of system and behavioral risks associated with dispensing certain high-alert medications and use a series of scorecards to estimate how often prescribing and dispensing errors reach patients and how the frequency will change if certain interventions are implemented.

To access these free Medication Safety Tools, go to: http://www.ismp.org/ahrq/default.asp

2010 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Patient Safety in the Office Setting

Click here to view the document.

TeamStepps Strategies Improving Outcomes in the Office Setting

The Hospital Insurance Company, Inc. has created the following video that demonstrates the use of TeamStepps training to improve office safety. Click here to view the instructional video.

NEW! AHRQ Patient Safety Education Training Catalog Available

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a new Patient Safety Education and Training Catalog that describes 333 patient safety programs currently available in the United States. The catalog offers an easily navigable database of education and training programs including a robust collection of information tagged for easy searching and browsing. The database identifies program characteristics, including clinical area, program and learning objectives, evaluation measures and cost. The clinical areas align with AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) Collections.

Five Things Ob-Gyns and Patients Should Question:

The College is pleased to join the Choosing Wisely® campaign, particularly because it complements our own focus on promoting quality, safety, and efficiency in the delivery of women’s health care services,” said The College’s Executive Vice President, Hal C. Lawrence III, MD. “We carefully selected the five procedures and tests in ob-gyn based on their potential to improve quality health care and avoid potential harm. As ob-gyns, our goal is to provide women the very best evidence-based medical care.”

Here is the list of five tests or procedures The College released:

1. Don’t schedule elective, non-medically indicated inductions of labor or cesarean deliveries before 39 weeks 0 days gestational age.
Delivery prior to 39 weeks 0 days has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of learning disabilities and a potential increase in morbidity and mortality. There are clear medical indications for delivery prior to 39 weeks 0 days based on maternal and/or fetal conditions. A mature fetal lung test, in the absence of appropriate clinical criteria, is not an indication for delivery.

2. Don’t schedule elective, non-medically indicated inductions of labor between 39 weeks 0 days and 41 weeks 0 days unless the cervix is deemed favorable.
Ideally, labor should start on its own initiative whenever possible. Higher cesarean delivery rates result from inductions of labor when the cervix is unfavorable. Health care practitioners should discuss the risks and benefits with their patients before considering inductions of labor without medical indications.

3. Don’t perform routine annual cervical cytology screening (Pap tests) in women 30–65 years of age.
In average-risk women, annual cervical cytology screening has been shown to offer no advantage over screening performed at 3-year intervals. However, a well-woman visit should occur annually for patients with their health care practitioner to discuss concerns and problems, and have appropriate screening with consideration of a pelvic examination.

4. Don’t treat patients who have mild dysplasia of less than two years in duration.
Mild dysplasia (Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia [CIN 1]) is associated with the presence of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which does not require treatment in average-risk women. Most women with CIN 1 on biopsy have a transient HPV infection that will usually clear in less than 12 months and, therefore, does not require treatment.

5. Don’t screen for ovarian cancer in asymptomatic women at average risk.
In population studies, there is only fair evidence that screening of asymptomatic women with serum CA-125 level and/or transvaginal ultrasound can detect ovarian cancer at an earlier stage than it can be detected in the absence of screening. Because of the low prevalence of ovarian cancer and the invasive nature of the interventions required after a positive screening test, the potential harms of screening outweigh the potential benefits.

To date, 25 medical specialty societies have released individual lists representing more than 130 tests and procedures to question. Choosing Wisely® has reached millions of consumers nationwide through a group of 14 consumer partners being led by Consumer Reports, the world’s largest independent product-testing organization, including AARP, Alliance Health Networks, The Leapfrog Group, and the National Partnership for Women & Families.

For more information on The College’s “Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question” and the Choosing Wisely® campaign, go to www.choosingwisely.org.

 

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