A real-time medical event reporting and prevention system in long-term care.

This article describes a knowledge-transfer process developed by Catholic Health East (CHE), headquartered in Newtown Square, PA, and focuses on improving resident safety in the skilled nursing or long-term care setting. How the health system customized and implemented an electronic medical event database to identify opportunities for improvement to prevent future occurrences of adverse events is outlined. The database customization and subsequent discussion of results is conducted under the auspices of CHE's quality and patient safety department in collaboration with 18 of CHE's long-term care facilities.