Health care information services provider Elsevier has developed an online tool designed to help nurses prevent the 10 "never events" identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Healthcare IT News reports. The tool, which will be available on Elsevier's Mosby's Nursing Consult Web site, was developed in response to a CMS decision in 2008 to cease reimbursing for adverse events that could have been prevented if specific evidence-based protocols had been followed. To create the tool, Elsevier researchers paired each of the 10 never events with the relevant articles, reports, monographs and studies. Nurses can use the tool to search for a never event and review a complete definition, evidence-based nursing content, book excerpts, journals, guidelines, patient education, images and relevant news. Elsevier's online tool includes information on all 10 never events, including catheter-associated urinary tract infection, foreign objects retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, manifestations of poor glycemic control, vascular catheter associated infection, surgical site infection and deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism. In addition, the online tool includes decision-making guidance for six conditions—including delirium, ventilator-associated pneumonia, Staphylococcus aureus septicemia, Clostridium difficile-associated disease, Legionnaire's disease and iatrogenic pneumothorax—currently being considered by CMS for inclusion on the never events list. According to the president of Mosby MCS, a business unit of Elsevier Health Sciences, "nurses have a powerful role to play in ensuring that hospitals are paid appropriately for their services," and the company is "proud to support nurses in improving the safety and quality of care they provide, not just to Medicare patients but to all the patients and family members they treat and care for." (Manos, Healthcare IT News, 8/11/09)
(c) RWJF, 2009
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