Today came the announcement that Suzanne Delbanco, founding director of the Leapfrog Group, has assumed the presidency of a company that tracks compliance with safety and quality practices via remote video. Big Brother, meet the Joint Commission. The report, in today’s Modern Healthcare, describes the process this way:Video auditing refers to a ...

August 11th was the 2nd anniversary of the epic implosion of George Allen's presidential campaign, the first defeat at the hands of YouTube. Two recent videos of unattended patients dying in ER waiting rooms leave me wondering whether healthcare has also entered the YouTube era.Remember the George Allen fiasco? A 20-year-old Indian-American named ...

As I mentioned in my last post, these should be the best of times for ''Infection Preventionists'' (formerly known as Infection Control Officers). After years of trying to get someone – anyone – to pay attention to their work, their day in the sun has finally arrived. But they are far from a joyful bunch. Why?In my talk to 4,000 members of the ...

I gave a keynote yesterday to the first-ever meeting on “Diagnostic Error in Medicine.” I hope the confab helps put diagnostic errors on the safety map. But, as Ricky Ricardo would say, the experts and advocates in the audience have some ‘splainin’ to do.I date the origin of the patient safety field to the publication of the IOM report on medical ...

Fresh on the heels of my recent bar coding epiphany comes another “unintended consequences” article. It turns out that the whipsawing that accompanies the adoption of new technologies is completely foreseeable, the “why doesn’t this thing work right?” phase as predictable as the seasons.Thanks to Dr. Mark Wheeler, Director of Clinical Informatics ...

This is one of the most commonly asked questions in IT World, and my answer has always been “CPOE first” – largely because that has always been David Bates’s (the world’s leading IT/safety researcher) answer. But I’ve changed my mind. Here’s why.Before I start, I promised that I’d let you know if I ever blogged on a topic in which I have a ...

Should doctors and nurses be subject to different penalties for precisely the same infraction? Of course not. Are they? Sure. Just ask Britney Spears.Britney was hospitalized at UCLA at least twice in the past few years – once when she gave birth to her first son in 2005, and again in early 2008 for psychiatric care. Both times, dozens of UCLA ...

My friend Mark Smith, who runs the California HealthCare Foundation, once wryly observed, “Have you ever noticed that the doctors who talk about how much fun primary care is only practice it one afternoon a week?” I may have become the hospitalist version of Mark’s Ivory Tower internists, but I’ll take my chances.I just finished a two-week stint ...

Great quote by USC cardiologist Leslie Saxon (a reporter reached her on her cell phone as Leslie was shopping) on this week’s NEJM study on delayed defibrillation: “You’re better off having your arrest [here] at Nordstrom [than in a hospital]… because there are 15 people around me.”You’ve probably seen the study, a detailed analysis of ...

Let's make this short and sweet. In this week's New Yorker, Atul Gawande describes Peter Pronovost's crusade to improve the safety of intensive care through the use of checklists. If it sounds dull, it's not. In fact, it is thrilling and inspiring. Gawande glides effortlessly from microscopic detail to panoramic view and back again to help us ...