Patient safety research has largely focused on hospitals. Efforts to improve safety in outpatient settings such as doctor’s offices, though improving, are still a work in progress says Dr. Hardeep Singh, chief of the Health Policy and Quality Program at the Houston VA Health Services Research & Development Center of Excellence, in the June issue of the institute’s Health Policy Research newsletter.
Outpatient research is challenging, in part, because the intermittent, long-term nature of care makes certain types of errors more difficult to discover, writes Singh. These and other challenges were highlighted in a recent American Medical Association report on ambulatory patient safety, which heavily cited the research of a team led by Singh. Among other issues, Singh’s team has focused on the causes of missed or delayed diagnoses in outpatient settings, and ways to reduce their occurrence. Others are investigating promising ways to improve medication safety and reduce risks associated with office-based procedures.
Read more about efforts to improve outpatient safety in the June 2012 Health Policy Research newsletter, produced jointly by the Baker Institute Health Economics Program and Baylor College of Medicine.