Hospitals receive technology grants
Charleston, WV - Twelve rural West Virginia hospitals critical to local health care have received $10,000 from Verizon to purchase technology that will improve patient safety. Each hospital received approximately $750 each to purchase computers, equipment or fund their Internet connections.
The "Partnering to Improve Patient Safety in Rural West Virginia" project is supported by grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (5UC1HS014920-02). Other project partners are the West Virginia Hospital Association, the West Virginia State Office of Rural Health in WVDHHR, and Quantros, Inc.
The Project represents an expansion of WVMI's patient safety program to West Virginia's small and rural hospitals, by using technology to reduce the occurrence of preventable medical errors.
Each hospital is now connected through the Internet to a WVMI database that logs each problem and allows experts to analyze and identify preventable errors and trends.
The grant is now in its second year of funding and 29 hospitals are now voluntarily providing WVMI with data on medical errors. To date, approximately 20,000 events have been reported. WVMI has been aggregating data from each participating hospital which allows the hospital to benchmark with other similar institutions. The Patient Safety Project Team has been conducting webexes and educational sessions for the hospitals to explain their results and initiate opportunities for safety improvement.