Pressing for better quality across healthcare - LA Times

[cbayer]

As steward of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, Donald Berwick is leading a charge to cut errors and increase efficiency. But time for such measures may be running out.


http://www.latimes.com/health/la-na-health-innovation-20111005,0,7115859.story




By Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau
October 4, 2011, 9:47 p.m.
Reporting from Atlanta— The cardiac intensive care unit at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta gleams and hums with a dazzling array of scientific wonders that breathe for tiny lungs and monitor every beat of an infant heart.

But on a recent visit, Dr. Donald Berwick was especially pleased by something decidedly low-tech: a quiet zone where nurses can place medication orders without being interrupted, even during emergencies.

Hospital leaders created the zone — little more than a computer terminal in a corner of the room behind an orange sign on the floor that reads "Shh … We're in the MedZone" — two years ago after noticing that distracted staff members were making dangerous mistakes when ordering medicine.

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