The Active Risk Control (ARC) toolkit: A new approach to designing risk control interventions

Current practice in healthcare risk management is supported by many tools for risk assessment (understanding problems), but none for risk control (solving problems). The results: a failure to improve safety, and a waste of the investment made in risk assessment. The Active Risk Control (ARC) Toolkit, available for free, fills this void with a systematic, structured approach to risk control.     

Patient safety: This is public health

Avoidable patient harm is a major public health concern, and may already have surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States. While the public health community has contributed much to one aspect of patient harm prevention, infection control, the tools and techniques of public health have far more to offer to the emerging field of patient safety science. Patient safety practice has become increasingly professionalized in recent years, but specialist degree programs in the field remain scarce. Healthcare organizations should consider graduate training in public health as an avenue for investing in the professional development of patient safety practitioners, and schools and programs of public health should support further research and teaching to support patient safety improvement.