Error Reduction in Health Care

Error Reduction in Health Care

Completely revised and updated, this second edition of Error Reduction in Health Care offers a step-by-step guide for implementing the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine to reduce the frequency of errors in health care services and to mitigate the impact of errors when they do occur.

With contributions from noted leaders in health safety, Error Reduction in Health Care provides information on analyzing accidents and shows how systematic methods can be used to understand hazards before accidents occur. In the chapters, authors explore how to prioritize risks to accurately focus efforts in a systems redesign, including performance measures and human factors.

This expanded edition covers contemporary material on innovative patient safety topics such as applying Lean principles to reduce mistakes, opportunity analysis, deductive adverse event investigation, improving safety through collaboration with patients and families, using technology for patient safety improvements, medication safety, and high reliability organizations.

The Editor

Patrice L. Spath, MA, RHIT, is president of Brown-Spath & Associates and assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Administration at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. She serves on the advisory board for WebM&M, an online case-based journal and forum on patient safety and health care quality sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Spath has authored numerous books and journal articles on health care performance improvement and patient safety.