4 Stories You May Have Missed: Google Searches & Healthcare Disparities – TJC Alert for New Tubing – Antibiotic Overuse – Mortality Rate Measures

We know you’re busy, but we don’t want you to miss important healthcare quality and patient safety news. Below is a roundup of stories you may have missed this week but may want to take a look at before calling it a week. (Sign up on the right if you’d like these news alerts delivered to you.)

1. How Google Searches Reveal Our Country’s Stark Healthcare Disparity
   Find out what New York Times journalists discovered when they used Google Correlate to learn how internet search trends differ among counties deemed our nation’s easiest and hardest to live in.
2. TJC Alert Promotes Safe Transition to New Tubing Standards
   According to The Joint Commission, tubing misconnections cause harm to way too many patients; so, the agency has issued a Sentinel Event Alert aiming to reduce occurrences of error as hospitals transition over to a new type of tubing connector in October 2014.
3. Antibiotic Overuse a ‘Huge Threat’ to Patient Safety, Says CDC
   Learn more about the antibiotic stewardship programs that the American Hospital Association and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are teaming up to help hospitals launch in what some have termed a “post-antibiotic era.”
4. Measuring Hospital-Wide Mortality – Pitfalls and Potential
   This article published online by theJournal for Healthcare Quality explores beneficial uses of measures such as the hospital standardized mortality ratio (HSMR). Read why researchers suggest that while such data may not serve as accurate predictors of overall quality, they could be helpful in developing improvement strategies.