Enhancing medication use safety: benefits of learning from your peers.

BACKGROUND: Maryland hospitals have been improving the safety of medication use practices since 2000. A retrospective analysis of 35 hospitals was conducted for 2005-2007 to determine the changes in medication use practices, communication methods within hospitals, patient education and changes in medical record management. METHODS: Thirty-five Maryland hospitals completed the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Medication Safety Self-Assessment for Hospitals, a voluntary initiative to improve the safety of medication use. A weighting structure is applied to calculate key element scores, core characteristic scores and overall self-assessment scores that were used in ANOVA and regression analyses. FINDINGS: The state-wide aggregate score significantly increased from 74.2% in 2005 to 81.2% in 2007 (p<0.05). The 35 hospitals scored highest in the following key areas in 2007: drug standardisation, storage and distribution (90.2%); drug labelling, packaging and nomenclature (88.1%); and environmental factors (84.3%). Results indicated that hospitals scored lowest in the key element area related to accessibility of patient information (72.5%) and in the core characteristics pertaining to redundancies and independent double checks (64.2%) in 2007. A substantial number of hospitals had positive and significant (p<0.05) changes in certain key elements and/or core characteristics. Few hospitals showed significant (p<0.05) decreases in their scores. CONCLUSION: MEDSAFE has directly assisted Maryland hospitals in improving medication use safety. The strategies and tools of MEDSAFE have been used in Maryland since 2000 and Singapore and Austria since 2006.

Relating outcomes to processes of care: the Maryland Hospital Association's Quality Indicator Project (QI Project).

BACKGROUND: The Maryland Hospital Association's Quality Indicator Project (QI Project) is a program of indicator development and application that has grown from 7 hospitals in 1987 to more than 700 hospitals today. METHODOLOGY: Expert panels help to create sets of indicators that describe events involved in a specific sequence of patient care. Each hospital collects data elements for the 21 indicators on a quarterly basis using specifically designed data-collection software. Indicator data are adjusted for case complexity, risk of adverse outcomes, and patient group characteristics. A report is developed that states the rate of occurrence of each indicator and how the hospital's indicator rate compares to other hospitals in the database. Hospitals then use this information to determine if specific processes in their delivery of care yield results that deviate from those of other hospitals. The QI Project promotes regional sharing of information about specific hospital initiatives that might benefit other participants. It also provides a model to use in interpreting what the indicator data reveal about hospital performance. OPERATIONAL ISSUES: QI Project is testing process indicators for patient-level and service-level data to supplement current aggregate-level trend and profile analysis. Indicator data are shared solely with participating systems, but changes in the confidentiality policy are being studied. Reliability assessment surveys are periodically conducted. EXAMPLES: Case studies portray improvement of processes prompted by indicator data for unscheduled admission following ambulatory surgery, for surgical wound infections, and for reducing emergency room waiting times. CONCLUSIONS: The chief contribution of the QI Project and similar projects may not be that they identify all issues of quality, but rather that they may help develop a generation of hospital professionals who will be better able to quantify, evaluate, and improve health care quality.