Miscommunication between care teams in hospitals during patient transitions can have serious consequences. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 70 percent of deaths caused by medical errors are related to communication breakdowns during care team handoffs.
Joanna Abraham, assistant professor of biomedical and health information sciences in the University of Illinois-Chicago’s College of Applied Health Sciences, contends that ineffective handoffs can lead to omissions and inaccuracies in the information shared among clinicians, with negative effects on patient safety.
