Henry County Health Center is doing as well as or better than its peers in the areas of patient falls, medication error rate and heart attacks, according to director of patient services Ann Corrigan.

Wristbands, stickers and placards are commonly used to identify allergy warnings, fall risks, or do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders to hospital staff. The problem is, until recently, these colors were not standardized from one hospital to the next in 22 states, including Iowa.

The Iowa Healthcare Collaborative hopes to change that. IHC recently initiated the decision to standardize color-coded alerts among hospitals that already use color-coded wristbands, such as HCHC.

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