Ethylene oxide (EtO) sterilization has been in the news a lot lately, and healthcare has much at stake. According to officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), approximately 56% of a...
Read moreDiagnosing Communication Gaps in Diagnostic Test Reporting
In the United States, there are 30 times more outpatient visits as hospital discharges. As a result of the high volumes and complexities inherent to ambulatory settings, one in twenty patients can ...
Read moreOutsmarting an Impossible Medical Equipment Budget
When Washington Adventist Hospital of Maryland hired ECRI Institute to provide equipment planning services for their new 170-bed hospital, they were in a financial bind. Their Certificate of Need (...
Read moreSafer Opioid Prescribing through Health IT
Editorial Note: This blog was also co-authored by Shari Medina, MD, of Harris Healthcare, chair of EHRA’s Patient Safety Work Group who led the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety’s workgroup ...
Read moreECRI Data Help Reignite Support for Patient Identifier in Congress
After heart disease and cancer, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States and include misdiagnoses, incorrect anesthesia, delayed treatment, and patient misidentifica...
Read moreThree Costly Pitfalls of Purchased Services Contracts
Purchased services are seen as the next great savings frontier in healthcare—and with good reason. Spend on purchased services accounts for approximately 30 to 35 percent of a hospital’s non-labor ...
Read more4 Ways to Prevent Harm from Surgical Staplers
If you’ve been following medical device safety issues this year, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the headlines about patient injuries and deaths related to internal surgical staplers. The devices...
Read moreAvoiding the Blame Game in Preventing Medical Errors
In late 2017, a catastrophic medication error led to a patient death at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. While waiting for a PET scan, an elderly woman was incorrectly administered vecuronium,...
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