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HHS has released Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices: Managing Threats and Protecting Patients, a collaborative publication by HHS and its industry partners with consensus-based voluntary cybersecurity guidelines to reduce cybersecurity risks for health care organizations of varying sizes, ranging from local clinics, regional hospital systems, to large health care systems. The publication outlines five cybersecurity threats and ten practices to mitigate those threats.

AHRQ has released EvidenceNOW Tools for Change, an online collection of more than 100 tools and resources to help primary care practices improve quality by providing evidence-based care to their patients. The EvidenceNOW Key Driver Diagram shows six key drivers – big changes – that primary care practices make to build their capacity to implement the best evidence. For each key driver there are several change strategies – specific actions that support achievement of that key driver. Read more at EvidenceNow Key Drivers and Change Strategies.

Through a partnership with CRICO Strategies, Constellation and UMIA are able to dive into medical professional liability (MPL) claim data to identify and guide process changes that reduce diagnostic error.

View the Client Case Study here.

Constellation has announced a strategic partnership with Imprivata®, a health care IT security company offering technology that addresses two critical needs: safeguarding electronic systems and health care data, and improving efficiency in the way clinical work is done.

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Citing an increase in cybersecurity attacks on health care organizations, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a framework to plan for and respond to cybersecurity incidents involving medical devices. The Medical Device Cybersecurity Regional Incident Preparedness and Response Playbook covers preparedness and response for medical device cybersecurity issues that impact the functionality of a device. The focus of the framework are threats or vulnerabilities that have the potential for large-scale, multi-patient impact and raise patient safety concerns.

To combat limited access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) of opioid use disorder (OUD) in rural areas, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has developed Telemedicine and Prescribing Buprenorphine for the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder to help clarify how clinicians can use telemedicine as a tool to expand buprenorphine-based MAT for OUD treatment under current DEA regulations. This guidance includes a clinical case example.

Read more at HHS https://www.hhs.gov/blog/2018/09/18/using-telemedicine-combat-opioid-epidemic.html

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have published best practices on using the health care physical environment to prevent infections.Using the Health Care Physical Environment to Prevent and Control Infection: A Best Practice Guide to Help Health Care Organizations Create Safe, Healing Environments contains best practices, case studies, resources and information based on key research.

For more information or download a free copy of the publication, visit http://www.ashe.org/resources/UseHealthCarePhysEnvironPreventandControlInfection.shtml.

A new AHRQ toolkit, Six Building Blocks A Team-Based Approach to Improving Opioid Management in Primary Care, aims to help primary care organizations take a team- and system-based approach to improving opioid management. The toolkit, Six Building Blocks, recommends that organizations demonstrate leadership support and develop consensus; revise and implement policies, patient agreements, and workflows; proactively track and monitor patient care; implement planned, patient-centered visits; develop resources to care for complex patients; and measure implementation success.

For more resources on chronic pain management, login to the Chronic Pain Management Bundled Solution. Login > Risk Management > Bundled Solutions > Chronic Pain Management

The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, a multi-stakeholder collaborative that Constellation is a participant, has released a new toolkit, Health IT Safe Practices for Closing the Loop, that identifies ways that technology can reduce and eliminate errors from diagnostic testing and medication mix-ups. The toolkit identifies three safe practice recommendations related to test tracking and medication changes:

• Develop and apply IT solutions to communicate the right information (including data needed for interpretation) to the right people, at the right time, in the right format.
• Implement health IT solutions to track key areas.
• Use health IT to link and acknowledge the review of information and the documentation of the action taken.

Constellation’s Trish Lugtu, CPHIMS, Sr. Manager, Advanced Analytics Solutions participated and presented to the multi-stakeholder workgroup

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The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), in partnership with the Aspen Institute, launched a public-private partnership made up of more than 35 organizations to develop collective strategies to counter the opioid epidemic. The collaborative will focus on priority areas such as education and training; prescribing guidelines and evidence standards; treatment and community approaches; communication, culture, and stigma; and research and data. Visit Action Collaborative on Countering the U.S. Opioid Epidemic for more information.