A recent editorial penned by Madeline Higgins, MD and IHQSE director Jeff Glasheen, MD and IHQSE faculty member Sarah Tevis, MD explores the challenges with current patient safety data. Despite advances in medical care, patient safety remains a critical area of focus within healthcare given that many patients continue to experience harm. While patient safety has gradually improved over time, progress is limited by outdated data models that prevent measurement of the true burden of harm, and therefore reduces our ability to understand ongoing drivers and develop innovative solutions to improving patient safety. The authors call for a change in how we measure and track data related to patient safety.

Two IHQSE grantees, Drs. Christina Stuart and Robert Meguid, recently published findings of a retrospective cohort study evaluating the incidence and consequences of incidental perioperative hypothermia exposure in the thoracic surgery population. They found that more than 90% of patients undergoing robotic-assisted thoracic surgery lung resections experience some degree of inadvertent perioperative hypothermia and that patients that developed hypothermia had associated increased rates of 30-day morbidity and infectious complications. Based on these data, Drs. Stuart and Meguid were awarded an IHQSE Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety grant to study structured and interval-specific interventions aimed at decreasing rates of inadvertent perioperative hypothermia and subsequent complications. This interventional study concluded in June of 2024 and the results are being analyzed.

Diagnostic error may result in serious harm for more than 500,000 patients and contribute to an estimated 10% of all patient deaths. Understanding diagnostic accuracy is crucial for improving patient outcomes and ensuring effective healthcare delivery. IHQSE Faculty, Drs. Michelle Knees and Katie Raffel, along with colleagues from the University of Colorado Division of Hospital Medicine, recently published an AHRQ Issue Brief aimed at furthering efforts to enhance diagnostic accuracy. The brief reviews a substantial body of literature on the impact of cognitive load on diagnostic accuracy, identifies areas for future research, and provides recommendations for integrating existing knowledge into current practice.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is used to compare performance on patient experience metrics across hospitals, but its impact on patient outcomes as well as its utility as an incentive metric for providers remains unclear. In this article for the Hospitalist, members of the Society of Hospital Medicine Performance Reporting and Measurement Committee, including IHQSE faculty member Anunta Virapongse, MD, MPH discuss the pros and cons of using HCAHPS as a metric for measuring performance in hospitalist programs.