National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report
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AHRQ Research Studies Date
Topics
- Adverse Drug Events (ADE) (4)
- (-) Adverse Events (13)
- Back Health and Pain (1)
- Caregiving (2)
- Children/Adolescents (2)
- Clinical Decision Support (CDS) (1)
- Clinician-Patient Communication (1)
- Communication (1)
- COVID-19 (1)
- Data (1)
- Diagnostic Safety and Quality (4)
- Electronic Health Records (EHRs) (2)
- Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) (1)
- Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) (1)
- Health Information Technology (HIT) (5)
- Hospitalization (1)
- Hospitals (3)
- Inpatient Care (1)
- (-) Medical Errors (13)
- Medication (3)
- Medication: Safety (1)
- (-) Patient Safety (13)
- Quality Improvement (1)
- Quality of Care (4)
- Shared Decision Making (1)
- System Design (1)
AHRQ Research Studies
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Research Studies is a compilation of published research articles funded by AHRQ or authored by AHRQ researchers.
Results
1 to 13 of 13 Research Studies DisplayedAuerbach AD, Lee TM, Hubbard CC
Diagnostic errors in hospitalized adults who died or were transferred to intensive care.
The objective of this retrospective cohort study was to determine the prevalence, underlying causes, and harms of diagnostic errors in hospitalized adults who were transferred to an intensive care unit or who died. Data was taken from 29 academic medical centers in the U.S. in a random sample of adults hospitalized with general medical conditions. Errors were found to have contributed to temporary harm, permanent harm, or death in nearly 18% of patients; among patients who died, diagnostic error was judged to have contributed to death in 6.6% of cases. The researchers noted that problems with choosing and interpreting tests and the processes involved with clinician assessment were a high priority for improvement efforts.
AHRQ-funded; HS027369.
Citation: Auerbach AD, Lee TM, Hubbard CC .
Diagnostic errors in hospitalized adults who died or were transferred to intensive care.
JAMA Intern Med 2024 Feb; 184(2):164-73. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.7347..
Keywords: Diagnostic Safety and Quality, Medical Errors, Hospitals, Inpatient Care, Quality of Care, Patient Safety, Adverse Events
Dalal AK, Schnipper JL, Raffel K
Identifying and classifying diagnostic errors in acute care across hospitals: early lessons from the Utility of Predictive Systems in Diagnostic Errors (UPSIDE) study.
This paper describes the Utility of Predictive Systems in Diagnostic Errors (UPSIDE) study, whose aim was to define the prevalence and underlying causes of diagnostic errors (DEs) in patients who die in the hospital or are transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) after the first 48 hours. This study was conducted at 31 hospitals with more than 2500 cases reviewed using electronic health records. The authors identified some insights into key requirements into building a robust DE surveillance program by developing these steps: 1) Develop a shared understanding of what constitutes a diagnostic error; 2) Use validated tools to identify diagnostic errors and classify process failures, but respect your context; 3) Develop a standard approach to using electronic health records for case reviews; 4) Ensure reliability and consistency of the case review process; and 5) Link diagnostic error case reviews to institutional safety programs. They also developed steps to establish a diagnosis error review process at the hospital level with six processes.
AHRQ-funded; HS027369; HS026613.
Citation: Dalal AK, Schnipper JL, Raffel K .
Identifying and classifying diagnostic errors in acute care across hospitals: early lessons from the Utility of Predictive Systems in Diagnostic Errors (UPSIDE) study.
J Hosp Med 2024 Feb; 19(2):140-45. doi: 10.1002/jhm.13136..
Keywords: Diagnostic Safety and Quality, Medical Errors, Adverse Events, Patient Safety, Quality of Care, Hospitals
Newman-Toker DE, Nassery N, Schaffer AC
Burden of serious harms from diagnostic error in the USA.
Americans who experience serious harm from misdiagnosis annually. Serious harm is defined as permanent morbidity or morality. This cross-sectional analysis used nationally representative observational data. The authors estimated annual incident vascular events and infections from 21.5 million (M) sampled US hospital discharges (2012-2014). US-based cancer registries were used to find annual new cancers. They derived diagnostic errors and serious harms by multiplying by literature-based rates for disease-specific incidences for 15 major vascular events, infections and cancers ('Big Three' categories). Extrapolating to all diseases (including non-'Big Three' dangerous disease categories), they estimated total serious harms annually in the USA to be 795,000 (plausible range 598,000-1,023,000). Using more conservative assumptions they estimated 549,000 serious harms. These results were compatible with setting-specific serious harm estimates from inpatient, emergency department and ambulatory care. Fifteen dangerous diseases accounted for 50.7% of total serious harms and the top 5 (stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism and lung cancer) accounted for 38.7%.
AHRQ-funded; HS027614; HS029350.
Citation: Newman-Toker DE, Nassery N, Schaffer AC .
Burden of serious harms from diagnostic error in the USA.
BMJ Qual Saf 2024 Jan 19; 33(2):109-20. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2021-014130..
Keywords: Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), Diagnostic Safety and Quality, Medical Errors, Patient Safety, Quality of Care, Adverse Events
Cohen TN, Berdahl CT, Coleman BL
Medication safety event reporting: Factors that contribute to safety events during times of organizational stress.
This study’s objective was to understand the insights conveyed in hospital incident reports about how work system factors affected medication safety during a coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) surge. The authors randomly selected 100 medication safety incident reports from an academic medical center (December 2020 to January 2021), identified near misses and errors, and classified contributing work system factors using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System-Healthcare. Results showed that among 35 near misses/errors, incident reports described contributing factors (mean 1.3/report) involving skill-based errors (n = 20), communication (n = 8), and tools/technology (n = 4). Seven of these events were linked to COVID-19.
AHRQ-funded; HS027455.
Citation: Cohen TN, Berdahl CT, Coleman BL .
Medication safety event reporting: Factors that contribute to safety events during times of organizational stress.
J Nurs Care Qual 2024 Jan-Mar; 39(1):51-57. doi: 10.1097/ncq.0000000000000720..
Keywords: Medication: Safety, Medication, Patient Safety, COVID-19, Adverse Drug Events (ADE), Adverse Events, Medical Errors
Cox ED, Hansen K, Rajamanickam VP
Are parents who feel the need to watch over their children's care better patient safety partners?
In this study, the investigators assessed whether needing to watch over care predicted parent performance of recommended safety behaviors to reduce medication errors and health care-associated infections. The researchers concluded that parents who reported the need to watch over care were more likely to perform behaviors specific to safe medication use (but not hand hygiene) compared with those not reporting this need.
AHRQ-funded; HS018680.
Citation: Cox ED, Hansen K, Rajamanickam VP .
Are parents who feel the need to watch over their children's care better patient safety partners?
Hosp Pediatr 2017 Dec;7(12):716-22. doi: 10.1542/hpeds.2017-0036..
Keywords: Adverse Drug Events (ADE), Adverse Events, Caregiving, Children/Adolescents, Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs), Medical Errors, Medication, Patient Safety
Kang H, Gong Y
Design of a user-centered voluntary reporting system for patient safety events.
A knowledge-based and user-centered patient safety events (PSE) reporting system is needed to organize scattered knowledge and improve user-friendliness. The researchers described the development of a knowledge base for patient falls, the most frequent PSE. Based on the knowledge base, user-centered design features were incorporated into the system to improve the reporting accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.
AHRQ-funded; HS022895.
Citation: Kang H, Gong Y .
Design of a user-centered voluntary reporting system for patient safety events.
Stud Health Technol Inform 2017;245:733-37.
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Keywords: Adverse Events, Medical Errors, Health Information Technology (HIT), Patient Safety
Khan A, Furtak SL, Melvin P
Parent-provider miscommunications in hospitalized children.
The objectives of this study were to: (1) examine characteristics of parent-provider miscommunications about hospitalized children; (2) describe associations among parent-provider miscommunications, parent-reported errors, and hospital experience; and (3) compare parent and attending physician reports of parent-provider miscommunications. The investigators found that parent-provider miscommunications were associated with parent-reported errors and suboptimal hospital experience. Parents reported parent-provider miscommunications more often than attending physicians did.
AHRQ-funded; HS022986; HS000063.
Citation: Khan A, Furtak SL, Melvin P .
Parent-provider miscommunications in hospitalized children.
Hosp Pediatr 2017 Sep;7(9):505-15. doi: 10.1542/hpeds.2016-0190..
Keywords: Adverse Events, Caregiving, Children/Adolescents, Clinician-Patient Communication, Communication, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Medical Errors, Patient Safety
Gong Y, Kang H, Wu X
Enhancing patient safety event reporting. a systematic review of system design features.
Electronic patient safety event reporting (e-reporting) is an effective mechanism to learn from errors and enhance patient safety. This paper aimed at revealing the current status of system features, detecting potential gaps in system design, and accordingly proposing suggestions for future design and implementation of the system. Three literature databases were searched for publications that contain informative descriptions of e-reporting systems. In addition, both online publicly accessible reporting forms and systems were investigated. The authors concluded that the current e-reporting systems are at an immature stage in their development, and discussed their future development direction toward efficient and effective systems to improve patient safety.
AHRQ-funded; HS022895.
Citation: Gong Y, Kang H, Wu X .
Enhancing patient safety event reporting. a systematic review of system design features.
Appl Clin Inform 2017 Aug 30;8(3):893-909. doi: 10.4338/aci-2016-02-r-0023..
Keywords: Adverse Events, Medical Errors, Health Information Technology (HIT), Patient Safety, System Design
Bhise V, Meyer AND, Singh H
Errors in diagnosis of spinal epidural abscesses in the era of electronic health records.
With this study, the investigators set out to identify missed opportunities in diagnosis of spinal epidural abscesses to outline areas for process improvement. The investigators found that despite wide availability of clinical data, errors in diagnosis of spinal epidural abscesses were common and involved inadequate history, physical examination, and test ordering. They suggested that solutions should include renewed attention to basic clinical skills.
AHRQ-funded; HS022087.
Citation: Bhise V, Meyer AND, Singh H .
Errors in diagnosis of spinal epidural abscesses in the era of electronic health records.
Am J Med 2017 Aug;130(8):975-81. doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2017.03.009..
Keywords: Adverse Events, Back Health and Pain, Diagnostic Safety and Quality, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Health Information Technology (HIT), Medical Errors, Patient Safety
Kang H, Gong Y
Developing a similarity searching module for patient safety event reporting system using semantic similarity measures.
In this study, three prevailing algorithms of semantic similarity were implemented to measure the similarities of the 366 patient safety events (PSE) annotated by the taxonomy of AHRQ. The result shows that the similarity scores reflect a higher consistency with the experts' review than those randomly assigned. Moreover, incorporating the algorithms into the reporting system enables a mechanism to learn and update, based upon PSE similarity.
AHRQ-funded; HS022895.
Citation: Kang H, Gong Y .
Developing a similarity searching module for patient safety event reporting system using semantic similarity measures.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 2017 Jul 5;17(Suppl 2):75. doi: 10.1186/s12911-017-0467-8.
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Keywords: Patient Safety, Adverse Events, Medical Errors, Health Information Technology (HIT)
Walsh KE, Harik P, Mazor KM
Measuring harm in health care: optimizing adverse event review.
The objective of this study was to identify modifiable factors that improve the reliability of ratings of severity of health care-associated harm in clinical practice improvement and research. Using a generalizability theory framework to estimate the impact of number of raters, rater experience, and rater provider type on reliability, the researchers found that reliability was greatly improved with 2 reviewers.
AHRQ-funded; 290201000022I.
Citation: Walsh KE, Harik P, Mazor KM .
Measuring harm in health care: optimizing adverse event review.
Med Care 2017 Apr;55(4):436-41. doi: 10.1097/mlr.0000000000000679.
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Keywords: Medical Errors, Adverse Events, Quality Improvement, Adverse Drug Events (ADE), Patient Safety
Kang H, Gong Y
A novel schema to enhance data quality of patient safety event reports.
In this study, the researchers designed a patient safety event (PSE) similarity searching model based on semantic similarity measures, and proposed a novel schema of PSE reporting system which can effectively learn from previous experiences and timely inform the subsequent actions. Their system will not only help promote the report qualities but also serve as a knowledge base and education tool to guide healthcare providers in terms of preventing the recurrence of PSEs.
AHRQ-funded; HS022895.
Citation: Kang H, Gong Y .
A novel schema to enhance data quality of patient safety event reports.
AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2017 Feb 10;2016:1840-49.
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Keywords: Quality of Care, Patient Safety, Data, Adverse Events, Medical Errors
Horsky J, Aarts J, Verheul L
Clinical reasoning in the context of active decision support during medication prescribing.
The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze reasoning patterns of clinicians responding to drug-drug interaction alerts in order to understand the role of patient-specific information in the decision-making process about the risks and benefits of medication therapy. The investigators found that declining an alert suggestion was preceded by sometimes brief but often complex reasoning, prioritizing different aspects of care quality and safety, especially when the perceived risk was higher.
AHRQ-funded; HS021094.
Citation: Horsky J, Aarts J, Verheul L .
Clinical reasoning in the context of active decision support during medication prescribing.
Int J Med Inform 2017 Jan;97:1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2016.09.004..
Keywords: Adverse Drug Events (ADE), Adverse Events, Clinical Decision Support (CDS), Shared Decision Making, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Health Information Technology (HIT), Medical Errors, Medication, Patient Safety