New online tool to help nurses prevent the 10 "Never Events"

Aug 10 2009

Elsevier, a world leader in healthcare and medical publishing and online solutions, today announced the availability of a new online tool within Mosby's Nursing Consult designed to help nurses prevent the 10 "Never Events" identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an October 2008 fact sheet.

Available at the Mosby's Nursing Consult (http://www.nursingconsult.com/) Web site, the CMS Never Events section on Nursing Consult online empowers nurses to prevent so-called Never Events or Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) in the quest to improve care quality and maximize hospital reimbursement.

"CMS Never Events supports nurses in proactively preventing avoidable incidents and ensuring that patients receive the safe, high quality, and efficient care they expect from hospitals," says Eileen Robinson, RN, MSN, Director of Nursing Continuing Education for Elsevier/Mosby/MCS. "Professional nurses have a responsibility to prevent adverse events as part of a broader effort to improve quality, enhance the patient care experience and increase the hospital's financial stability.

Nursing Consult's contributors developed CMS Never Events in response to CMS' 2008 decision that it would no longer pay for adverse events that could be prevented through the application of specific evidence-based protocols. In addition, CMS does not permit patients to be billed for the cost of these events.

To create CMS Never Events, Elsevier researchers matched each Never Event/HAC with appropriate articles, reports, monographs and studies. The tool covers CMS' initial list of 10 HACs, including foreign objects retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, manifestations of poor glycemic control, catheter-associated urinary tract infect ion (UTI), vascular catheter associated infection, surgical site infection and deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/pulmonary embolism (PE).

Nurses who access CMS Never Events to prevent an HAC, such as a catheter-associated urinary tract infection (UTI), are able to review a definition, evidence-based nursing content, books, journals, guidelines, patient education, images and news. For example, in the case of a catheter-associated UTI, nurses can scan guidelines from the Infectious Disease Society of America, while reviewing some 18 full-text journal articles.

Nursing Consult also includes decision-making guidance on six conditions now under review by CMS for inclusion on the HAC list. Among them are delirium, ventilator-associated pneumonia, staphylococcus aureus septicemia, clostridium difficile-associated disease, Legionnaire's disease and iatrogenic pneumothorax.

"Elsevier is proud to support nurses in improving the safety and quality of care they provide, not just to Medicare patients, but to all the all patients and family member they treat and care for," said Brian Bussey, President of Mosby MCS, a business unit of Elsevier Health Sciences. "Nurses have a powerful role to play in ensuring that hospitals are paid appropriately for their services and that patients never suffer needlessly."

Mosby's suite of online tools, including Mosby's Nursing Consult with CMS Never Events, Mosby's Nursing Skills and Mosby's Index, is used by more than 500 hospitals across the U.S., including hospitals of the U.S. Army, hospitals within Kaiser, and Ohio State University. CMS Never Events is a component of a suite of professional nursing tools from Elsevier. In addition to Nursing Consult, the suite includes Nursing Skills, which offers training in nearly 1,000 nursing skills and procedures, and Mosby's Index, a database of close to 3,000 nursing resources.

Members of the media can obtain a short-term media password to secure access to CMS Nursing Events within Mosby's Nursing Consult. Please contact Fran Phillips at [email protected] with the words Nursing Consult Password Request in the subject line.