Rural Health Research Gateway

Preventing Errors in Rural Hospitals

Funder: Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center: Minnesota Rural Health Research Center
Phone: 612.624.6151
Lead researcher: Ira Moscovice, PhD , 612.624.8618, mosco001@umn.edu
Project completed:February 2003
Topics: Hospitals and clinics
Quality

The purpose of this project is to assess the implications of the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System," for rural hospitals to help identify ways in which they can monitor and implement systems to prevent medical errors. Project staff will review the IOM report and the Federal Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force (QuIC) report to identify issues of particular concern for rural hospitals. These issues will then be discussed via phone interviews with the key staff for the IOM report and QuIC report and representatives from health care purchasers, providers, and regulators across the country knowledgeable about hospital quality of care and medical error issues. Potential issues to be addressed in the working paper include mandatory versus voluntary reporting system, measuring the "true rate" of adverse events, strategies for developing safe practices, and access/safety tradeoffs.

Publications

  • Environmental Context of Patient Safety and Medical Errors
    Author(s): Douglas Wholey, Ira Moscovice, Terry Hietpas, Jeremy Holtzman
    Report Number: Working Paper No. 47
    Date: 03 / 2003
    Explores the environmental context of patient safety and medical errors with specific interest in rural settings. Reviews the patient safety/medical error literature, identifies unique features of rural health care organizations and their environment that relates to patient safety issues and medical errors. Discusses strategies for medical error reduction and prevention in rural health care settings.