Minnesota Hospital Association

Quality & Patient Safety

Medication safety

Minnesota hospitals take medication safety seriously and work to reduce the number of adverse drug events (ADE), or harm a patient incurs resulting from medical intervention related to a drug. In hospitals, examples of ADEs include overdoses, providing a drug to the wrong patient or allergic reactions. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, patients in hospitals experience approximately 1.9 million medication errors annually, from events that cause little or no harm to those that result in death.

MHA participates in the Adverse Drug Event Affinity Group with the Partnership for Patients Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (HIIN). The affinity group is working to identify national, standardized measures for opioid stewardship.

The MHA Medication Safety Committee has developed medication safety road maps based on evidence-based best practices.

MHA members can log in to the website at the top-right corner of this page to view the medication safety, ADE prevention, and medication reconciliation road maps. 

Other resources

Anticoagulation therapy

Anticoagulant therapy is a leading cause of avoidable medication-related adverse events. Effective July 1, 2019, eight new elements of performance will apply to all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals, including CAHs. The new requirements are:

Anticoagulation stewardship

An FDA-funded report on anticoagulation stewardship programs is available for download on the Anticoagulation Forum website. The following resources are available on the website and were created to improve the systematic management of anticoagulants across care settings. 

  • Core elements of anticoagulation stewardship programs
  • Anticoagulation stewardship checklist
  • Administrative oversight gap analysis