Accidents Happen, but They Shouldn't Define the Care You Provide

When working in aging services facilities, ambulatory care, or hospitals, accidents can happen during patient treatments, in the patient environment, or in other scenarios. However, accidents need ...

Medical Incident Reports Improve Healthcare. How and When to File Them

Medical incident reports are essential to improving patient safety and correcting medical errors that could cause harm to future patients. Today's healthcare establishments, such as hospitals, agin...

Incident Management Systems Are Essential For Any Healthcare Facility

Regardless of the type of healthcare facility you manage—a hospital, an assisted living center, or an ambulatory care establishment—incident management for patient safety should be a primary focus ...

Medication Safety and Error Prevention: Efforts Should Focus on Systems Solutions

Many people take medicine without enough thought to medication safety issues, such as following dosage directions, being aware of medication interactions and side-effects, or weighing other importa...

How to Improve Your Organization's Approach to Healthcare Incident Management

Accidents, outbreaks, and other incidents regularly occur in healthcare settings. This is not surprising to most healthcare providers, including those working in aging services and ambulatory care ...

How to Prevent the Spread of Infection in Healthcare Settings

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are longstanding problems in hospitals and healthcare. These infections can be caused by a variety of pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and can ...

Managing Monkeypox: Take 3 Steps Now to Protect Patients and Staff

After three long years of managing COVID-19, the world is facing another public health crisis: monkeypox. According to the World Health Organization, “Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease that occ...

What is Near-Miss Reporting? And How Can it Save Lives?

The ECRI and ISMP Patient Safety Organization has reached a milestone: more than 5 million events reported since its inception. However, two thirds of the reports were about actual events that reac...

We See You: ECRI Recognizes Exceptional Health Technology Management

A popular folk musician once said, “You just get the vibe of your surroundings, and it rubs off on you.” Indeed, surroundings are very important; and when a pleasing aesthetic melds with functional...

5 Traits to Help Your Team Become a High Reliability Organization

Achieving the status “High Reliability Organization (HRO)” is now the gold standard for healthcare organizations, but there is little agreement on how to achieve it. To help you move your organizat...

ECRI's Health Technology Excellence Award: Recognizing Exceptional Health Technology Management

A popular folk musician once said, “You just get the vibe of your surroundings, and it rubs off on you.” Indeed, surroundings are very important; and when a pleasing aesthetic melds with functional...

Why You Need a Patient Safety Organization (PSO)

Healthcare workers want to keep patients safe and provide high quality care. Unfortunately, despite best intentions, erroneous, substandard, and unequal care are still too common, harming 1 in 10 h...

Healthcare Heroes Need Help Too: Mental Health Issues Grow with Pandemic Stresses

ECRI this year, named healthcare worker mental health as its second of ten patient safety concerns for 2022. For years, the healthcare community has known that the stresses of the profession can ta...

The “Great Resignation” Hits Healthcare Where it already Hurts: Staffing Shortages

Across industries, the topic of worker shortages has dominated conversations because the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the “great resignation.” And healthcare is no exception. But in healthcare,...

ECRI's Top 10 Patient Safety Risks for 2022

An important part of maintaining patient safety is establishing the shared belief that despite the high-risk environment in healthcare, patient safety is possible, and it’s everyone’s responsibilit...

4 Types of Healthcare Workplace Violence and ECRI's Guidance for Action Plans

Healthcare workers are known to suffer slip and falls, needle sticks, and back pain, but unfortunately, they also can face violence on the job. Recent shocking headlines include: Nurse Found Dead f...

To Reduce Malpractice Claims Improve Communication

"Communication failures cost 1.5 times as much as claims without communication failures, and were more than twice as likely to result in a payout of more than $1 million," the Journal of Patient Sa...

ECRI Evidence Boot Camp 2021 Recap: Effective Methods for Rapidly Assessing the Best Available Evidence

Refresh your evidence assessment knowledge of important topics discussed at ECRI's Evidence boot camp event: Effective Methods for Rapidly Assessing the Best Available Evidence.  Healthcare payers...

ECRI Guidance: Legality and Ethics of Refusing to Treat Unvaccinated Patients

Two full years after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus first appeared, the world is still grappling with this highly contagious, infectious disease. The state of the...

Addressing Discharge Delays as Opportunity for Healthcare Efficiency Gains and Safety Gains

This position statement provides real time information to support policy decisions. This excerpt is from “Rethinking Patient Discharge: A Low-cost Opportunity for Healthcare Efficiency Gains” (Cali...

Leadership Means Never Going It Alone

As president and CEO of the nation’s largest patient safety organization, I had the privilege of leading ECRI through a dangerous time for humanity. Overnight, the insidious COVID-19 virus sent our...