Becker's Hospital Review

127 FINANCE CMO / CARE DELIVERY ECRI, Institute for Safe Medication Practices form joint patient safety organization By Mackenzie Bean E CRI Institute launched a joint patient safety organization with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to improve the safety of med- ication, medical device and care practices. Both nonprofit groups have held federal designations as safety organi- zations since HHS launched the Patient Safety Organization program in 2008. Through the program, individual providers and healthcare facili- ties can voluntarily and anonymously share quality data with designated safety organizations, which use the information to help address indus- trywide care quality concerns. By combining their organizations into one, ECRI and the Institute for Safe Medication will create one of the largest patient safety entities in the world. Together, the nonprofits will analyze data on safety events and medication errors, sharing updated guidance and recommendations with healthcare providers. n 7 most common sentinel events this year By Mackenzie Bean C are management incidents were the most common type of sentinel event reported in the first half of 2020, according to data The Joint Commission released Aug. 12. The commission defines a sentinel event as a patient safety event that results in death, permanent harm, severe temporary harm or intervention required to sustain life. It reviewed 437 reports of sentinel events in the first six months of the year, 85 percent of which were voluntarily reported to the accrediting body. Despite clinical and operational challenges brought on by the pandemic, the 437 events are comparable to the number of events reported in the first half of 2019. In the first six months of 2020, sentinel events were most frequently re- ported in the following categories: 1. Care management — 165 reported events 2. Surgical or invasive procedures — 131 3. Unassigned events at the time of the report — 46 4. Suicide — 41 5. Protection events — 38 6. Environment events — 12 7. Product or device — 4 n Mom transmitted coronavirus to baby in womb, Dallas physicians say By Anuja Vaidya A woman in Texas transmitted the new coronavirus to her infant during her pregnancy, physicians reported in Au- gust. Physicians at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas described the case in an article pub- lished e Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. A woman, 34 weeks pregnant, came to UT South- western's teaching facility, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, with signs of premature labor. She also had a fever and diarrhea, and she tested positive for COVID-19. Within five days of her hospitalization, she gave birth to a baby girl in early May. e newborn was admitted to neonatal intensive care unit as she was born prematurely. Aer 24 hours, the infant developed a fever that spiked. She also showed signs of respiratory distress, including lower levels of oxygen in her blood. She was tested for COVID-19 24 and 48 hours aer birth. Both tests came back positive. "At that time, the knowledge we had was that transmission doesn't occur in utero, so we really weren't expecting that at all," said Julide Sisman, MD, first author of the article and an associate professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern. UT Southwestern researchers examined the mother's placenta to pinpoint how the virus was transmitted to the infant. ey discovered evi- dence of the novel coronavirus in the placenta. "It's very important to bring to the forefront this finding that mothers and infants can be affected by COVID-19, transmission can occur during pregnancy, and pregnant mothers need to pro- tect themselves," saidAmanda Evans, MD, senior author of the article and an assistant professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern. Both the mother and infant survived and fully recovered. ey were released from the hospital within a few weeks. e physicians said that more research is re- quired to understand how COVID-19 affects mothers and their infants. n

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