PHILADELPHIA – Elsevier has launched an online tool to help nurses prevent the 10 "never events" identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

According to officials of the Philadelphia-based healthcare information services provider, the tool empowers nurses to prevent "never events," or hospital-acquired conditions (HAC), in the quest to improve care quality and maximize hospital reimbursement.

Elsevier will make the tool available on its Mosby's Nursing Consult Web site in the CMS never events section.

"CMS Never Events supports nurses in proactively preventing avoidable incidents and ensuring that patients receive the safe, high quality and efficient care they expect from hospitals," said Eileen Robinson, director of nursing continuing education for Elsevier. "Professional nurses have a responsibility to prevent adverse events as part of a broader effort to improve quality, enhance the patient care experience and increase the hospital's financial stability."

Nursing Consult's contributors developed CMS Never Events in response to CMS' 2008 decision that it would no longer pay for adverse events that could be prevented through the application of specific evidence-based protocols. In addition, CMS does not permit patients to be billed for the cost of these events.

To create CMS Never Events, Elsevier researchers said they matched each Never Event/HAC with appropriate articles, reports, monographs and studies. The tool covers CMS' initial list of 10 HACs: foreign objects retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, manifestations of poor glycemic control, catheter-associated urinary tract infect ion (UTI), vascular catheter associated infection, surgical site infection and deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/pulmonary embolism (PE).

Nurses who access CMS Never Events to prevent an HAC, such as a catheter-associated urinary tract infection (UTI), are able to review a definition, evidence-based nursing content, books, journals, guidelines, patient education, images and news. For example, in the case of a catheter-associated UTI, nurses can scan guidelines from the Infectious Disease Society of America, while reviewing some 18 full-text journal articles.

Nursing Consult includes decision-making guidance on six conditions now under review by CMS for inclusion on the HAC list: delirium, ventilator-associated pneumonia, staphylococcus aureus septicemia, clostridium difficile-associated disease, Legionnaire's disease and iatrogenic pneumothorax.

"Elsevier is proud to support nurses in improving the safety and quality of care they provide, not just to Medicare patients but to all the all patients and family members they treat and care for," said Brian Bussey, president of Mosby MCS, a business unit of Elsevier Health Sciences. "Nurses have a powerful role to play in ensuring that hospitals are paid appropriately for their services and that patients."