HORSHAM, PA—Medication errors happen in all phases of perioperative care, often due to the complexity and fast-paced nature of the setting, as well as the multiple handoffs of care. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has released a new assessment to help hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and other surgery settings evaluate their medication safety practices and identify specific challenges and opportunities for improvement.

The ISMP Medication Safety Self Assessment^® for Perioperative Settings also offers providers a way to document compliance with risk assessment and performance improvement requirements from various state and federal regulatory and accrediting agencies. Participating organizations that submit their assessment findings to ISMP anonymously will be able to compare their individual experiences with the aggregate experiences of demographically similar facilities nationwide—the data submission deadline is August 31, 2021.

“We urge perioperative service providers to get involved in this unique effort to not only advance their own safety initiatives, but also to benefit the entire healthcare community,” says ISMP President Michael Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD (hon), DPS (hon), FASHP. “The assessment will allow ISMP to detail our nation’s baseline efforts to prevent patient harm in this setting and develop and share effective prevention strategies.”

The self assessment is being conducted under a contract from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ISMP has conducted multiple other medication safety self assessments for specific care settings and focus areas, including for hospitals, community/ambulatory pharmacies, high-alert medications, oncology, and antithrombotic therapy. Several national medication safety initiatives have been created based on data from ISMP’s previous self assessments, and other countries have adopted some of the assessment tools to gather information and goals for their own safety efforts.

Facilities can participate anonymously via a secure, password protected website, and will have unlimited opportunity to view and download their own weighted scores during the data collection period. Participants are encouraged to attend a free ISMP webinar on May 25, 2021, to learn more about the self assessment and how to obtain the most valuable, accurate, and useful results.

For more information and to register for the free webinar, visit: www.ismp.org/node/18027.

About the Institute for Safe Medication Practices

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is the nation’s first 501c (3) nonprofit organization devoted entirely to preventing medication errors. ISMP is known and respected for its medication safety information. For more than 25 years, it also has served as a vital force for progress. ISMP’s advocacy work alone has resulted in numerous necessary changes in clinical practice, public policy, and drug labeling and packaging. Among its many initiatives, ISMP runs the only national voluntary practitioner medication error reporting program, publishes newsletters with real-time error information read and trusted throughout the global healthcare community, and offers a wide range of unique educational programs, tools, and guidelines. In 2020, ISMP formally affiliated with ECRI to create one of the largest healthcare quality and safety entities in the world, and ECRI and the ISMP PSO is a federally certified patient safety organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As an independent watchdog organization, ISMP receives no advertising revenue and depends entirely on charitable donations, educational grants, newsletter subscriptions, and volunteer efforts to pursue its life-saving work. Visit www.ismp.org and follow @ismp_org to learn more.

For more information, contact:
Laurie Menyo, Director of Strategic Communications
610.825.6000 ext. 5310
lmenyo@ecri.org