RHRC's Prevalence of Evidence-Based Safe Medication Practices in Small Rural Hospitals Paper

 The Rural Health Research& Policy Center (RHRC) presents the findings of a national survey whose purpose was to describe the prevalence of evidence-based safe medication practices, including the use of voluntary medication error reporting, in the nations smallest hospitals. A key finding is that hospitals with an average daily census of six or more patients were more likely to report having adopted safe medication practices than were hospitals with an average daily census of five or fewer patients. Findings from this research reveal considerable opportunity for improvement in hospitals with 49 or fewer beds to achieve evidence-based standards of medication safety.

The paper can be found at: http://www.unmc.edu/ruprihealth/Pubs/IssueBrief2008-1.pdf