Reducing errors in blood specimen labeling : a multihospital initiative Pennsylvania patient safety advisory Blood Specimen Collection -- methods Medical Errors -- prevention & control Patient Identification Systems -- methods Product Labeling -- methods Specimen Handling -- methods Patient blood specimen identification is critical for quality patient care. Misidentified specimens can result in delayed diagnosis, additional laboratory testing, treatment of the wrong patient for the wrong disease, and severe transfusion reactions. Specimen identification errors have been reported to occur at rates of 0.1% to 6.5%. From August 2009 through October 2010, the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority sponsored a multihospital blood specimen labeling collaborative. The Authority worked with the hospitals to measure blood specimen labeling error rates, document hospital-specific interventions to reduce the labeling error rate, and measure the outcome of the interventions. At the end of the collaborative, there was a 37% aggregate statistically significant decrease in specimen labeling errors. This study discusses the collaborative's objectives, methods, and outcomes. [Harrisburg, Pa.] : Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, c2011 Pennsylvania. Patient Safety Authority. ECRI (Organization) Institute for Safe Medication Practices. Technical Report Text Illustrations nlm:nlmuid-101561907-pdf 101561907 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101561907 English United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. https://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/3.0