In November 2010, The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert requiring all hospitals to screen patients who do not present with a primary mental health diagnosis and are treated in general hospitals in medical-surgical units and the ED, in addition to those patients who...
I've been attending a lot of patient safety and quality conferences lately-‘tis the season. As conferences generally go, some are valuable and the networking is great; others are not overly helpful; and the opportunities for learning from others are slim to none.
Hospitals have been working toward better patient satisfaction for years. Now, with patient experience survey results posted publicly and a new national value-based purchasing system in place, it's more important than ever to understand what positively and negatively affects a patient's time...
The 10th annual National Quality Colloquium in Cambridge, MA, focused on patient engagement and provider accountability during its opening session in August. Each year, Colloquium brings together national and international leaders in healthcare quality and safety. This year's...
Wash your hands. It's a message that infection control (IC) professionals cannot stress enough, yet caregivers can become unknowingly complacent in their hand hygiene routines, easily becoming deliverers of harm without even realizing it.
With the advent of electronic health record implementation, never-ending administrative duties, and unrelenting changes, it's no surprise that practitioners often talk about losing the joy of caregiving. In fact, many patient safety and quality conferences have begun to focus on this theme....
This fall, The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare will release its Targeted Solutions Tool™ addressing wrong-site surgery. The tool is part of the Center's Targeted Solutions series and is available to any organization accredited or certified by The Joint...
Most of the time when a patient is ill, an x-ray, scan, or lab test is needed to obtain more precise information to understand the cause of the illness so the care team can help resolve it. This happens in hospitals thousands of times every day.
