Integration is opening the door to a new journey toward oral health value-based care

Oral health is a key component of overall health and there is a cost to not including it in the value-based transformation conversation. Health care needs to break down the silos that exist between dentistry and medicine so we can leverage integration to achieve value-based care.     

Process and outcome measures using nursing sensitive indicators

Measuring the impact of high quality nursing care has become an imperative driven by several issues during the past several years. Current challenges surrounding the nursing shortage and the decreasing nursing workforce projected for the next decade alone have raised serious questions about the effect fewer registered nurses (RNs) will have on the quality of health care. In addition, heightened public attention to patient safety and adverse outcomes has prompted national organizations, such as the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and the National Quality Forum, to consider and implement recommendations for establishing and monitoring nursing quality indicators that focus on nursing-sensitive patient outcomes. These issues, now more than ever, have provided us with a burning platform to examine exactly what nurses do and their impact on patient health outcomes.     

Understanding diagnostic safety in emergency medicine: A case‐by‐case review of closed ED malpractice claims

The report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care calls for collaboration between professional liability insurance carriers and health care providers to identify opportunities to improve diagnostic performance. We used this collaborative approach and involved risk management/patient safety professionals and emergency medicine physician reviewers to analyze diagnosis‐related emergency medicine closed claims from a large malpractice insurer. Our aim was to identify opportunities for risk reduction and to develop an approach for improving at‐risk processes. Analysis of these cases revealed several missed opportunities in the diagnostic process. A collaborative approach offered greater insight into diagnosis process failures that may not have been evident if cases were reviewed in silos. Focused review findings led to a multidisciplinary improvement collaborative to develop clinical guidelines for improving at‐risk practices and informed a simulation‐based training initiative.     

A new frontier in healthcare risk management: Working to reduce avoidable patient suffering

This article presents a new avenue for healthcare risk managers to drive improvement for patients and healthcare organizations alike: working to reduce avoidable patient suffering. It briefly describes the problem of patient suffering, differentiates between avoidable and unavoidable suffering, and suggests that common risk management tools can be used to tackle the problem. It also highlights a success story from one large health system.