2021 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards Executive Brief

Learn how to identify and address health technology hazards in your facilities ECRI’s Top 10 Health Technology Hazards list, now in its 14th year, identifies the potential sources of danger we beli...

A Guide to Getting it Right the First Time

Medical Equipment Planning Whitepaper Construction projects offer hospitals a once-in-a-decade chance to design and equip clinical environments to meet current and future goals for clinical, financ...

Technology’s Role in Safe Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care to Improve Patient Care

Integrated behavioral health and primary care (integration) has been identified as a promising approach to enhancing patient care delivery, safety and quality. Technology tools, including electron...

Hidden Medication Loss When Using a Primary Administration Set for Small-Volume Intermittent Infusions

While covering for a colleague during patient rounds in an adult medical unit, a pharmacist noticed two empty 50 mL minibags of ZOSYN (piperacillin and tazobactam) hanging on a patient’s intravenou...

Patient Safety and Digital Health Tools: What Are Providers and Developers Focusing On at the End of 2020?

Patient safety remains, as it should, a priority for developers of and providers who use electronic health records (EHRs) and other health IT. For example, ECRI’s Partnership for Health IT Safety h...

ECRI Cautions against CMS Blanket Coverage for FDA-designated Breakthrough Devices

In September 2020, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed a rule that would establish a Medicare coverage pathway to provide Medicare beneficiaries nationwide with faster access to...

Keep Healthcare Workers Safe to Improve Patient Safety

Healthcare workers face work-related risks, illnesses, and injuries, and patient safety is directly tied to worker safety. Creating a culture of safety is crucial. ECRI, and its affiliate, the Inst...

ECRI and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices PSO: Strategies for Surgical Patient Safety

Systems Approach to Improving Outcomes and Reducing Risk Register to receive the free Executive Brief of ECRI and the ISMP PSO’s ninth Deep Dive analysis on one of the most utilized areas of health...

ECRI Stands for Senior Care

The stakes are high in medicine and healthcare – they pertain to life and death, as the current pandemic has reminded us on an hourly basis. This is especially true when it comes to those who care ...

NAN Alert! Dangerous Wrong-Route Errors with Tranexamic Acid

We recently learned about three cases of accidental spinal injection of tranexamic acid instead of a local anesthetic intended for regional (spinal) anesthesia. Container mix-ups were involved in e...

ECRI Statement on Equitable Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccine

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) just released a draft framework on equitable allocation of COVID-19 vaccine. The NASEM has published this publicly for review and...

How to Use Technology to Facilitate the Integration of Behavioral Health with Primary Care

An Inside Look into the Current Partnership Workgroup COVID-19 anxiety is increasingly part of our everyday lives. The resulting disruptions in daily routines can create or worsen anxiety and rais...

Using Technology to Facilitate the Integration of Behavioral Health with Primary Care: The Importance of Data Sharing

A Continuing Inside Look into the Partnership Workgroup on Optimizing Health IT for Safe Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care "Integration" of behavioral health and primary care is a p...

Taking a Stand against Racial Injustice

Tightly woven into ECRI’s DNA is the imperative to speak truth to power, based on facts and evidence. The facts are that for centuries in the United States, racism has caused historic and acute tr...

Reducing the Noise from Alerts, Alarms, and Notifications

When technology entered healthcare, so too did alerts. Alerts acted as attention grabbers, reminders, notices of changes in a patient's condition, and warnings about malfunctions or improper funct...

The Differences Between Human Error, At-Risk Behavior, and Reckless Behavior Are Key to a Just Culture

Do you believe your organization operates within a Just Culture? We have asked this question many times while working collaboratively with healthcare organizations and professionals. It is not an e...

Readiness Can Help Minimize Harm

Download a free copy of the aging services white paper When an incident occurs in aging services, the very first steps taken—including identifying the incident, caring for the people affected, maki...

Healthcare Acquired Infection Risks from Worker Fingernails and Polish

Infection prevention is of vital concern right now, and reducing disease transmission between healthcare workers (HCWs) and patients is critical for patient safety.  One source of danger to patient...

Emergency Preparedness and Response in Aging Services

Download a free copy of the Aging Services White Paper on epidemics, pandemics, and outbreak response In its broadest sense, effectiveness is dependent on the degree to which all stakeholders—n...

Critical Value of Third-Party Expertise for Accident Investigation

Learn about the benefits of utilizing outside experts and the challenges of internal investigations Despite the extraordinary efforts of legislators, grassroots organizations, and individual hea...

Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2020

Learn how to identify and address patient safety concerns in your facilities The 2020 edition of our Top 10 list features new topics, with an emphasis on concerns that have the biggest potential im...