Transitions of care are ubiquitous in modern health care. These transitions are too often associated with harm from incomplete or ineffective communication of clinical information, leading to poorer health outcomes for patients and frustration and burnout for health care providers. One of the most high-risk transitions of care is from acute care settings to post-acute care settings, especially when the diagnostic evaluation may not be complete at the time of a patient’s discharge from the acute hospital setting. The volume and complexity of information to be communicated at hospital discharge is significant, leaving multiple opportunities for confusion, omission, waste, and harm, which leads to an unacceptably high burden of diagnostic errors.
About the Diagnostic Safety Toolkit
In response to this issue, the AAMC with the guidance of the Chief Medical Officers’ Group and Integrating Quality Initiative, developed the Diagnostic Safety Toolkit. The toolkit is designed to facilitate discussion among clinicians and leaders at teaching hospitals about practical approaches to ensuring that diagnostic testing results are communicated reliably across transitions of care.
The tools listed below catalyze teaching hospitals’ journey toward better diagnostic safety and quality by stimulating conversation, evaluating processes, and encouraging standardized work across multidisciplinary and interprofessional teams.
The Facilitator Guide which contains all elements of the toolkit, as well as the additional tools, are in Word format and are intended to serve as a workbook to support you in completing this work.
Toolkit Documents
- Toolkit at a Glance (PDF)
- Preface (PDF)
- Facilitator’s Guide (Word)
- Getting Started (PDF)
- Patient Vignettes (Word)
- Patient Vignettes (PPT)
- Institutional Inventory (Word)
- Reflection and Action Guide (Word)
Interprofessional Testing of the AAMC Diagnostic Safety Toolkit
The AAMC is excited to announce that five AAMC member teaching hospitals received $10,000 awards to utilize the Diagnostic Safety Toolkit at their institution through our 2022-2023 Diagnostic Safety Awards program. The recipients include the University of Puerto Rico, University of Minnesota, Creighton University, University of Chicago Medicine, and MaineHealth. The awardees will participate in a session at the Learn Serve Lead conference in Seattle to discuss their experience and outcomes with implementing the toolkit. We will be broadly distributing the lessons learned and opportunities for addressing diagnostic safety at our member institutions.
Overview Webinar
A webinar was held on July 21 to provide an overview of the Diagnostic Safety Toolkit and showed attendees how they can use the toolkit at their institution.
Facilitator: Dr. Andrew Olson is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Olson's academic work focuses on the nature and development of clinical reasoning as well as methods to measure and decrease diagnostic error. He is the Co-Chair of the SIDM Education Committee.