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Decreasing Handoffs |
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Handoff communication is a difficult problem, especially for academic medical centers in the wake of the further duty hour restrictions that went into effect in 2011. These restrictions were intended to decrease errors by fatigued house staff; the unintended result was they increased the number of handoffs and resultant risk of communication error. Much attention has been focused on increasing the quality of handoffs, including MUSC's development of a standardized tool for resident use. However, a team at the Mayo Clinic looked at this problem differently-why not decrease the number of handoffs? Using a complex scheduling model, researchers demonstrated how patient handoffs could be reduced by 23%. These researchers note that their proposal has not been implemented yet, but is cost neutral and is under consideration.
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