Background: Discharge summaries (DSs) are key clinical documents at the interface between inpatient and outpatient care. Their quality affects continuity of care, coordination, and patient safety, yet information transfer at discharge is often incomplete, delayed, or unclear. Standardized instruments for assessing DS quality remain scarce. Objective: This study aimed to develop a structured, recipient-oriented quality assessment instrument (QAI) for physician DS as a pragmatic measure of discharge communication quality and to conduct an initial evaluation of its applicability and interrater reliability. Methods: We conducted a formative instrument development study using a structured, iterative author panel consensus process informed by Delphi principles, condensing 43 recipient-oriented DS criteria into 12 items across 3 domains: medical content, structure and organization, and language and clarity. It was applied in a pragmatic pilot reliability evaluation to 20 anonymized internal medicine DSs, independently assessed by 5 physician raters with heterogeneous clinical backgrounds who were not involved in QAI development. Interrater reliability was evaluated using Krippendorff alpha and quadratically weighted Gwet agreement coefficient 2 (AC2). Reporting followed the Guidelines for Reporting Reliability and Agreement Studies. Results: The median overall quality score was 78.5% (IQR 75.3%-82.5%), and the mean was 79.1% (SD 5.0%). Scores were highest for language and clarity and lowest for medical content. Overall interrater reliability differed by coefficient: Krippendorff α was 0.45 (95% CI 0.34-0.55) whereas Gwet AC2 was 0.76 (95% CI 0.70-0.80). The largest discrepancy was observed for language and clarity, with an α of 0.02 (95% CI −0.06 to 0.10) and an AC2 of 0.88 (95% CI 0.84-0.91). Conclusions: The QAI provides preliminary evidence for a clinically applicable approach to assessing key quality dimensions of physician DS. Interrater reliability varied across domains and reliability coefficients, with a marked discrepancy between AC2 and Krippendorff alpha for language and clarity. These findings support its use for exploratory quality improvement and future validation.

How clinical audit is improving breast cancer care, with insight from the national breast cancer audits on diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.

🚨 The FDA has issued an early alert regarding BD ChloraPrep Applicators in Medline convenience kits that may not be sterile. Health… #ChloraPrep #FDAalert #Healthcarequality #Infectioncontrol #Medicaldevicesafety

Background: Increasingly, individuals are seeking treatment for sexual health concerns through direct-to-consumer (DTC) telehealth platforms, and there is ongoing debate about whether such platforms can deliver safe and effective care. Objective: The objective of this study was to examine how men who sought sexual health treatment through a large national DTC telehealth platform viewed the quality and safety of their care, and how these perceptions differed from those of men who sought other types of treatment through the platform. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of data gathered from an online survey sent to individuals who accessed treatment through the DTC telehealth platform. Individuals completed the survey between June 30, 2025, and July 3, 2025. The survey consisted of 4 sets of items that asked respondents about their perceptions of the quality and safety of the care they accessed. We used descriptive statistics to summarize individuals’ responses to survey items and chi-square tests to compare the responses of those who accessed sexual health treatment with those who accessed other types of treatment. Results: The survey was completed by 497 men who accessed sexual health treatment and 512 men who accessed other types of treatment through the platform. Among sexual health participants, 397 of 497 (≥80%) reported favorable impressions of the quality and safety of care across most survey items. Sexual health participants were more likely than nonsexual health participants to view the online intake as similar to an in-person appointment (²=12.4;

Ahead of World Patient Safety Day 2026, Molly Hopson, senior research associate at Picker, says that for a safe NHS, we need to listen to the people accessing and using services.

Background: The prospective prescription review system can improve prescription rationality, but its effectiveness in high-volume specialty care settings is not well established. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the prospective prescription review system in reducing irrational prescriptions and to analyze factors associated with successful interception. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed all outpatient and emergency prescriptions issued between January 1 and December 31, 2024, at an eye, ear, nose, and throat tertiary hospital in Shanghai, China. Among 2,559,342 prescriptions, 123,914 (4.84%) flagged as irrational by the prospective prescription review system were included. Results: The overall interception success rate was 32.99% (40,877/123,914). The prescription rationality rate increased from 95.23% (2,476,305/2,600,219) to 96.79% (2,477,144/2,559,342) after excluding intercepted prescriptions (

Community Care told the court it expects to serve about 150,000 unique patients this year, with 54% uninsured; it reported cutting new-patient wait times nearly 37% systemwide and a 6% increase in encounters through June (about 22,000 more visits).

Eli Lilly's oral GLP-1 agonist Foundayo has been approved for weight management and type 2 diabetes in the UK, its first European market.

South Africa's Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has anchored patient safety as its core mandate since 2018. Operating under the Medici… #Healthcarequality #Medicineregulation #PatientSafety #Regulatoryaffairs #SAHPRA