Patient Safety

Your personal safety awareness is essential to preventing dangerous medical errors. Aetna provides a variety of resources to improve your health care safety.

MedQuery
A key part of Aetna Health ConnectionsSM is MedQuery®, a program powered by Aetna’s ActiveHealth® Management CareEngine® system. This program continuously scans your available health data and compares them with more than 1,000 evidence-based guidelines of care. It can identify gaps, errors, omissions and duplications in care to prevent problems and reveal opportunities for better or safer care. Here are some examples:

  • Error identified! An Aetna member who was prescribed quinine to treat leg cramps received quinidine instead – a potentially life-threatening error. CareEngine revealed the mistake and alerted the prescribing physician, who immediately contacted the patient.
  • Drug recommended! Another member diagnosed with coronary artery disease had no claim history for an ACE inhibitor, a recommended therapy. CareEngine picked up on this gap in care and notified the treating physician.

    MedQuery works behind the scenes on your behalf, providing information that can improve your care and help you and your doctor work better together.

Patient Safety Tips
Print out our Patient Safety Tips checklist and take it with you when you visit your doctor. It offers practical suggestions to help you have a positive health care experience.

Additional Safety Resources
The following organizations provide patient safety information:

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations features patient safety tips on its Speak Up page.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides information on many health-related topics.

The Commission on Cancer offers information on programs approved through its review process.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research offers educational materials on medication safety.

The Leapfrog Group is a group of Fortune 500 companies, including Verizon, and other large private and public health care purchasers focused on helping people make more informed health care choices and encouraging patient safety. The Leapfrog Group provides information on health care quality to help people compare hospitals.