Rural Hospitals Show Improvement in Patient Safety Systems
Gap in Patient Safety Narrowing Between Rural and Urban Hospitals
Anne Buckley
VCU Communications and Public Relations
(804) 828-6052
albuckley@vcu.edu
Sean Wagner
(781) 388-8550
professionalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net
6/14/2007
A new study examining patient safety systems in rural hospitals, such as automated alert systems and medication administration procedures, shows that these hospitals are making changes to address the problem more rapidly than urban hospitals, and the gap between urban and rural quality measures is narrowing.
“A number of innovative strategies to improve safety measures are underway nationally as a result of the National Institute of Medicine’s report regarding the tremendous problem of patient safety in the U.S.,” says study author Daniel Longo, M.D., director of research in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine.
Longo also notes that rural hospitals’ patient safety system needs may not always be identical to those of urban hospitals, given differences in such characteristics as patient volume.
“Existing patient safety standards are largely based on evidence from research in urban and teaching hospitals,” says Longo. “Each hospital needs to find systems that will work within their existing culture and structure.”
The author stresses that hospitals do not make these changes in a vacuum.
“Given the complex issue of hospital safety, the burden of improvement cannot rest on hospitals alone,” says Longo. “It requires a commitment by taxpayers, state legislatures and Congress to provide the resources and influence necessary to ensure that both rural and urban hospitals have the best possible patient safety systems.”
The study is published in the Summer 2007 issue of Journal of Rural Health. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article may contact professionalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.
- About VCU and the VCU Medical Center
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 32,000 students in 211 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-nine of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.
