Optimizing Identification of Allergic Sensitization to Seasonal Inhalant Allergens in the USA: Implications for Constructing Optimal Panels to Evaluate Patients with Allergy.

Introduction: While a specific number and type of antigens are recognized to detect perennial inhalant allergies, the optimal number and combination of allergens to reliably identify seasonal allergic sensitization is unclear due to limited national data. This study analyzed aeroallergen testing data from a large US clinical reference laboratory to provide guidance for optimizing seasonal allergen test selection.

Methods: The 2019 serum IgE tests for seasonal inhalant allergens were identified from the Quest Diagnostics database.

Contributions of Glucose and Hemoglobin A1c Measurements in Diabetes Screening.

Objectives: Given the long-term consequences of untreated diabetes, patients benefit from timely diagnoses. Payer policies often recognize glucose but not hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) for diabetes screening. This study evaluates the different information that glucose and HbA1c provide for diabetes screening.

Strategies for laboratory professionals to drive laboratory stewardship.

Appropriate laboratory testing is critical in today's healthcare environment that aims to improve patient care while reducing cost. In recent years, laboratory stewardship has emerged as a strategy for assuring quality in laboratory medicine with the goal of providing the right test, for the right patient, at the right time. Implementing a laboratory stewardship program now presents a valuable opportunity for laboratory professionals to exercise leadership within health systems and to drive change toward realizing aims in healthcare.

Changes in Test Volumes During Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Laboratory Stewardship Opportunity.

Context.—: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) changed the dynamics of health care delivery, shifting patient priorities and deferring care perceived as less urgent. Delayed or eliminated care may place patients at risk for adverse outcomes.

Linking Statistics With Testing Policy to Manage COVID-19 in the Community.

Objectives: To determine the public health surveillance severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing volume needed, both for acute infection and seroprevalence.

Methods: Required testing volumes were developed using standard statistical methods based on test analytical performance, disease prevalence, desired precision, and population size.

Results: Widespread testing for individual health management cannot address surveillance needs.

Health Sector Reform in the Kurdistan Region-Iraq: Primary Care Management Information System, Physician Dual Practice Finance Reform, and Quality of Care Training.

Since 2010, the RAND Corporation has worked with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Planning of the Kurdistan Regional Government to develop and implement initiatives for improving the region's health care system through analysis, planning, and development of analytical tools. This third phase of the project (reflecting work completed in 2013-2015) focused on development and use of a primary care management information system; health financing reform, focusing on policy reform options to solve the problem of physician dual practice, in which physicians practice in both public and private settings; and hospital patient safety training within the context of health quality improvement. Most main primary health care centers serve too many people, and most sub-centers serve too few people.

Testing New Codes to Capture Post-Operative Care.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) uses the resource-based relative value system to determine payment for physicians and nonphysician practitioners for their professional services. For many surgeries and other types of procedures, Medicare payment includes pre- and post-operative visits delivered during a global period of 10 or 90 days. Congress mandated that CMS collect data on the "number and level" of visits in the global period from a representative sample of physicians beginning January 1, 2017.

Health Sector Reform in the Kurdistan Region - Iraq: Financing Reform, Primary Care, and Patient Safety.

In 2010, the Kurdistan Regional Government asked the RAND Corporation to help guide reform of the health care system in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The overarching goal of reform was to help establish a health system that would provide high-quality services efficiently to everyone to prevent, treat, and manage physical and mental illnesses and injuries. This article summarizes the second phase of RAND's work, when researchers analyzed three distinct but intertwined health policy issue areas: development of financing policy, implementation of early primary care recommendations, and evaluation of quality and patient safety.

Effective communication of molecular genetic test results to primary care providers.

Purpose: We evaluated a template for molecular genetic test reports that was developed as a strategy to reduce communication errors between the laboratory and ordering clinician.

Methods: We surveyed 1,600 primary care physicians to assess satisfaction, ease of use, and effectiveness of genetic test reports developed using our template and reports developed by clinical laboratories. Mean score differences of responses between the reports were compared using t-tests.

Strengthening laboratory systems in resource-limited settings.

Considerable resources have been invested in recent years to improve laboratory systems in resource-limited settings. We reviewed published reports, interviewed major donor organizations, and conducted case studies of laboratory systems in 3 countries to assess how countries and donors have worked together to improve laboratory services. While infrastructure and the provision of services have seen improvement, important opportunities remain for further advancement.

Components of care vary in importance for overall patient-reported experience by type of hospitalization.

Background: Patients are hospitalized for disparate conditions and procedures. Patient experiences with care may depend on hospitalization type (HT).

Objectives: Determine whether the contributions of patient experience composite measures to overall hospital ratings on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey vary by HT.

Comparing process- and outcome-oriented approaches to voluntary incident reporting in two hospitals.

Background: The debate over whether patient safety efforts should focus on adverse events or errors logically extends to voluntary incident reporting in hospitals. Reports emphasizing adverse events take an outcome-oriented approach to improving quality, whereas those emphasizing errors take a process-oriented approach. These approaches were compared in an analysis of 2,228 paper incident reports for 16,575 randomly selected inpatients at an academic hospital and a community hospital in the United States in 2001.

The beginning of the second decade of the era of patient safety: implications and roles for the clinical laboratory and laboratory professionals.

Providing high quality, effective laboratory services is not new to the laboratory profession. The laboratory began examining its analytical quality in the 1920s when the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP) began a voluntary proficiency testing (PT) program with that was the predecessor of the College of American Pathologist's current PT program. The program focuses primarily on analytic quality, 1 of the 3 phases of what has become known as the "total testing process," a cyclical process conceptualized by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that provides a framework for assessing quality of laboratory services.

Adherence to quality indicators and survival in patients with breast cancer.

Background: International initiatives increasingly advocate physician adherence to clinical protocols that have been shown to improve outcomes, yet the process-outcome relationship for adhering to breast cancer care protocol is unknown.

Objective: This study explores whether 100% adherence to a set of quality indicators applied to individuals with breast cancer is associated with better survival.

Research Design And Subjects: Ten quality indicators (4 diagnosis-related and 6 treatment-related indicators) were used to measure the quality of care in 1378 breast cancer patients treated from 1995 to 2001.

Programmable infusion pumps in ICUs: an analysis of corresponding adverse drug events.

Background: Patients in intensive care units (ICUs) frequently experience adverse drug events involving intravenous medications (IV-ADEs), which are often preventable.

Objectives: To determine how frequently preventable IV-ADEs in ICUs match the safety features of a programmable infusion pump with safety software ("smart pump") and to suggest potential improvements in smart-pump design.

Design: Using retrospective medical-record review, we examined preventable IV-ADEs in ICUs before and after 2 hospitals replaced conventional pumps with smart pumps.

Costs of intravenous adverse drug events in academic and nonacademic intensive care units.

Background: Adverse drug events (ADEs), particularly those involving intravenous medications (IV-ADEs), are common among intensive care unit (ICU) patients and may increase hospitalization costs. Precise cost estimates have not been reported for academic ICUs, and no studies have included nonacademic ICUs.

Objectives: To estimate increases in costs and length of stay after IV-ADEs at an academic and a nonacademic hospital.

Rates and types of events reported to established incident reporting systems in two US hospitals.

Background: US hospitals have had voluntary incident reporting systems for many years, but the effectiveness of these systems is unknown. To facilitate substantial improvements in patient safety, the systems should capture incidents reflecting the spectrum of adverse events that are known to occur in hospitals.

Objective: To characterise the incidents from established voluntary hospital reporting systems.