It has been recognized in healthcare organizations across the country that there is a significant relation between organizational quality, improved patient outcomes, and the financial success of an organization. Through ...

A quantum shift has occurred in the expectations for the provision of care when moving from the inpatient hospital setting to the outpatient ambulatory care setting. As health care systems merge with physician practice ...

Surgical site infections are a significant threat to patient safety, they increase patient mortality and morbidity, and increase health care expenditures.  A pre-surgical protocol that implements two applications of 2% Chlorhexidine gluconate using prepackaged cloths is an evidence-based practice that kills and then prohibits the growth of potentially dangerous skin flora.  The purpose of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of 2% Chlorhexidine gluconate cloths when administered twice pre-surgically to reduce the incidence of surgical site infections and to improve pre-surgical documentation.  The Iowa framework for quality improvement was used with results demonstrating that, while documentation remained an area for improvement, there was a significant decrease in surgical site infections over the comparison group.              Keywords: Surgical site infection, 2% Chlorhexidine gluconate cloths, Pre-surgical skin asepsis, Patient Safety, Teamwork, EMR Documentation...

Medication errors are the most commonly identified errors occurring in every healthcare setting costing billions of dollars per year. They have the potential to cause death to a patient or increase hospital length of stay. ...

A hospital located in the Northeastern United States, has an opportunity to improve the number of specimens that are mislabeled. Mislabeled specimens increase costs, create patient inconvenience and can lead to unnecessary ...

Alarm fatigue occurs when excessive alarms cause nurses to disregard alarms posing a significant patient safety threat. This quality improvement project utilized the plan-do-check-act approach to examine the impact of daily ...