Patient Identification

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The release of ECRI Institute PSO's Deep Dive: Patient Identification, based on events submitted to the PSO database, focused the spotlight on a process essential for safe patient care. A basic tenet of safe care is to deliver the correct intervention to the correct patient, says William M. Marella, MBA, MMI, executive director, PSO operations and analytics, ECRI Institute. Yet, the 7,613 events analyzed for the Deep Dive represent examples when safe care didn't occur or almost didn't occur because of patient identification mistakes. The events spanned a 32-month...