A recently published book emphasizes the importance of the health care field taking the time to ensure that patient safety is their main priority. The book Error Reduction in Health Care: A Systems Approach to Improving Patient Safety is something that hospitalists, medical professionals, and long-term care facilities should be paying attention to, especially in light of The Joint Commission’s focus on reliability and process improvements.
Decubitis ulcers, postoperative deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms are serious events that some health care professionals have caused, the book shows. The medical errors, in some cases, were preventable and show a lack of patient monitoring, miscommunication between colleagues, adequate medication and therapies, and misdiagnoses. Medical malpractice claims rose because of these missed opportunities to carry out quality patient care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also calls these events that happen because of medical error “never events”. Patients have a right to take legal action for the injury they did not come in with. Loved ones who are also dealing with a wrongful death can pursue litigation when these events could have been prevented.
“It’s a sad situation because there are so many ways to stop these events before they go to the extreme,” said Greg Grambor, president of Vascular PRN™, a national compression therapy equipment company. “Patients who are immobile, predisposed to these conditions or showing signs of increased heart rate, labored breathing, and limb changes need to be examined immediately.”
Error Reduction in Health Care found that the demands on modern health care workers can cause a lot of the error. Medical centers that succeeded in decreasing pressure ulcers and more serious “never events” created powerful tools to help remind them of patient safety. These health care facilities used:
scorecards that help examine a patient’s venous thromboembolism risk and utilize appropriate medicines and compression devices
songs that were played every two hours over the speaker system to remind workers to reposition patients, one song that really worked is “Roll Over Beethoven”
appropriate mattresses for high-risk individuals
a “Save Our Skin” sticker on the high-risk patient’s room door
“Patients are owed quality care each and every time they walk into a health care facility,” said Grambor. “There are centers that consistently provide the level of care patients deserve, but until the thousands of needless injuries and deaths stop occurring, individuals need to know there are ways to recover from these never events.”
Vascular PRN is known for helping the medical field with foot and leg sequential compression devices, bariatric equipment, and the Skin IQ™ mattress coverlet that drastically helps to prevent these never events. Vascular PRN has decades of experience helping hospitals, nursing homes, surgery centers, and other institutions with their compression therapy rentals and sales.
To learn more, visit www.vascularprn.com or call 800-886-4331.
Vascular PRN
601 S. Falkenburg Road, Suite 1-4
Tampa, FL 33619
info@medsupplyoftampa.net
800-886-4331
