MHA News Now

The Winter 2018 edition of Mississippi Hospitals magazine is available for download here. To receive the magazine in print, join an MHA society! For more information on how to have your hospital news featured in this magazine, contact Ayanna Bloom at (601) 368-3263 or abloom@mhanet.org.

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Almost-Daily Health Care Headlines now Available from MHA

You know that we scour health care news each week to bring you What You Need to Know Now on Saturdays, but you only see the Top 10 stories. If you want the rest of them too, you can now sign up for daily health care headlines with MHA Revue. Enter your email here to receive daily health care headlines in your Inbox. (If you don't want any additions to your Inbox, you can also read these daily headlines on MHA's LinkedIn page.)

 

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Emergency allegry shots less effective after heat exposure

The medicine in emergency allergy shot like the EpiPen can deteriorate when exposed to heat, so don't leave them in the car on a hot day, researchers warn. Read more here.

Two New Opioid Trainings for Providers: Initiating Opioid Therapy and Implementing the CDC Guideline

CDC launched two new opioid trainings that support providers in safer prescribing of opioids for chronic pain. The modules are part of a series of interactive online trainings that feature recommendations from the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The seventh module, Determining Whether to Initiate Opioids for Chronic Pain, helps providers identify and consider important patient factors when starting or continuing opioid therapy, while the eighth module, Implementing CDC’s Opioid Prescribing Guideline into Clinical Practice, walks providers through a quality improvement (QI) process using a set of 16 clinical measures outlined in the Quality Improvement and Care Coordination: Implementing the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. Both modules include clinical scenarios and tools and a resource library to enhance learning. These and all the modules in the series offer free continuing education, available on the Training for Providers webpage.

Joint Commission Issues New Sentinel Event Alert

The Joint Commission (TJC) has issued Sentinel Event Alert #60 “Developing a reporting culture: Learning from close calls and hazardous conditions.”

The alert provides guidance for healthcare organizations in “establishing a psychologically safe environment that eliminates fear of negative consequences for reporting mistakes, and actively encourages learning from close calls in patient care.”  It is intended to support organizational leaders as they create systems that recognize and encourage reporting of unsafe conditions to shift the safety culture to one of high reliability.

The alert cites practices from organizations throughout the United States. The alert recommends healthcare leaders:

• Review TJC’s Sentinel Event Alert #57 – “The essential role of leadership in developing a safety culture”
• Communicate leadership commitment to building trust and reporting through a safety culture
• Develop a system for reporting incidents, including close calls and hazardous conditions, that encourages reporting. The system should include a recognition program and provide a feedback loop so staff know that action is being taken to address or fix the identified flaw.

TJC’s alerts identify specific types of sentinel and adverse events and high-risk conditions, describe their common underlying causes and recommend actions by healthcare organizations to reduce risk and prevent future occurrences.