News: OIG plans to publish adverse events toolkit

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced its plan to publish a toolkit for identifying adverse events through medical record reviews for inpatient hospitals, JustCoding reported. According to the announcement, the OIG plans to have the toolkit published in fiscal year 2022.

The OIG stated it has found that patient harm is common among Medicare beneficiaries in a range of inpatient healthcare settings even though federal regulations require healthcare facilities to identify harm, such as adverse events, and work to reduce them.

The OIG says it will use guidance materials and tools from prior studies to develop a web-based toolkit for identifying and measuring adverse events. This toolkit will provide standard definitions for most event types, lists of triggers to halt patient harm, suggest guidance for reviewers, and considerations for clinical decision making. Ultimately, the toolkit’s purpose is to assist healthcare facilities, government agencies, and researchers in their efforts to improve care.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by JustCoding. The OIG workplan can be found here. To read about using the OIG work plan to focus your CDI efforts, click here.