The National Quality Forum (NQF) has released the
Advancing Anticoagulation Stewardship: A Playbook to help guide health care organizations to implement evidence-based strategies to promote patient safety in the use of anticoagulant medications. This is a free resource to improve patient safety throughout anticoagulation therapy.
While medication errors in anticoagulation administration or dosage can cause life-threatening bleeding or other adverse events, the playbook offers a proven approach for reducing the likelihood. Anticoagulation Stewardship represents a significant opportunity to minimize preventable patient harm, which was identified as an urgent need in a
recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
Anticoagulation Stewardship is defined as a coordinated, efficient, and sustainable system-level initiative designed to achieve optimal anticoagulant-related health outcomes and minimize avoidable adverse drug events. It has been shown to be successful in improving health outcomes, increasing efficiency, and reducing costs. Effective stewardship is associated with reductions in drug-drug interactions, bleeding events, hospital readmissions, length of stay, and other healthcare expenditures.