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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Rodney W. Hicks, RN, MSN, Diane D. Cousins, R Ph, and John P. Santell, MS, RPh. Practitioner and Product Experience, U S Pharmacopeia, 12601 Twinbrook, Rockville, MD 20852, 301-816-8338, Rh@usp.org
Voluntary, national confidential reporting systems have many roles in patient safety. These systems provide a standardized taxonomy for event reporting and aggregate analysis. These systems strive to detect system weaknesses before the occurrence of harm. They provide rich information within an individual health care organization for internal quality improvement efforts and they can serve collaborative and comparative efforts between health care organizations. One such reporting program is MedMARx – an Internet-accessible, anonymous, medication error database. A team of methodological and clinical staff conducted cross tab analysis of nearly 150,000 medication error reports. The recurring and consistent trends observed from the MedMARx data should represent a clear call to action, and underscore the need to change the medication use process, the perceptions of error reporting, the culture fostered by administration and staff, and the facility’s willingness and readiness to adopt solutions. In July 2001, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) implemented new standards directly focused on patient safety. These standards call for organizations to prioritize performance improvement initiatives. The willingness of participants in a national medication error reporting program to share information, even in the absence of federal legislation to protect such information, attests to the effectiveness of a model that supports anonymous reporting. A national database that functions at a local level offers considerable prospects for healthcare stakeholders – the information can be used by individual hospitals and by national organizations to develop quality indicators, and to identify policies and procedures that work.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Public Policy, Quality
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: U S Pharmacopeia
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: employment