Washington, DC - A report in the July 25 issue of JAMA questions the validity of studies reporting medical errors. Fourteen internists studied 383 reviews of 111 hospital deaths in 7 VA Medical Centers to determine whether or not those deaths might have been prevented. The physician reviewers estimated that only 6% of the patients who died might have lived until discharge, and only 0.5% might have lived another three months. The study’s authors write: “Medical errors are a major concern regardless of patients' life expectancies, but our study suggests that previous interpretations of medical error statistics are probably misleading. Our data place the estimates of preventable deaths in context, pointing out the limitations of this means of identifying medical errors and assessing their potential implications for patient outcomes.” For more, go to: jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v286n4/abs/joc02235.html.
Washington, DC - The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released new evidence on practices that could improve patient safety throughout the nation’s health care system. Making Health Care Safer : A Critical Analysis of Patient Safety Practices is a critical analysis of 79 patient safety practices, with a focus on 11 that researchers consider to be highly proven to work but are not performed routinely. Unfortunately, none of the practices focuses on improving end of life care. For details and the full report click here. In another AHRQ-funded study, researchers report that HIV patients rarely talk about end-of-life care. Nearly half of all HIV-infected people in the U.S. never talk about end-of-life care with their doctors. The study found that if HIV patients, especially minorities and intravenous drug users, had such discussions with their physicians, both groups might better understand what types of care patients desire when they are very ill and near death. Such discussions may lead to a patient designating a surrogate to make decisions if he or she is unable to do so. For the complete study, visit JAMA.
Web Resource - The Inter-Institutional Collaborating Network on End-of-life Care (IICN) now offers a full-text search service that lets users find high-quality content on end of life issues from several organizations through a single interface. Users may try out the new centralized full-text search from several demonstration sites. The main home page for the new MegaSearch service is at Growth House. The centralized content repository includes materials provided by many members of the IICN. (Organizations can install the centralized IICN MegaSearch feature on their own web sites.) This process gives visitors access to a wealth of material while enabling them to remain on one website. This new installable version of the full-text search service complements the well-known Growth House Search Engine which is already in use on more than 100 healthcare web sites worldwide. For more information on how your organization can participate in this content-sharing system, call Growth House, Inc., at 415-255-9045, or send a message to iicn@growthhouse.org and make the subject line of your message "IICN Search".
New Listserv - The Social Work Network in Palliative and End-of-Life Care listserv is a joint effort of the Project on Death in America and the Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York. This email discussion group provides an opportunity for social workers in such fields as oncology, geriatrics, HIV, hospice, nephrology, and pediatrics to develop an international network and discuss multidimensional aspects and issues related to palliative and end-of-life care. To learn more, go to Resource Center, Education, Research at the Beth Israel web site.
Web Resource - The BenefitsCheckUp is the nation's first free, 50-state (including the District of Columbia) online service to provide public benefit screening. The National Council on the Aging (NCOA) sponsors the BenefitsCheckUp to address a national problem: millions of older adults are eligible for benefits, but do not know how to apply for them. Ranging from health coverage to supplemental income to help in paying utility bills, there are millions of older adults who could benefit from a wide array of public programs if they knew about them and how to apply for them. Users complete a 10-minute survey, which then provides an individual analysis of benefit programs for which an individual might be eligible and how to apply for them.
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