In a highly-anticipated move expected to significantly affect the regulatory rules that hospitals and other healthcare facilities are held to, CMS has officially adopted the 2012 edition of the Life Safety Code® (LSC).
A new study conducted by John Hopkins researchers estimates that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is wrong about the third biggest cause of death in the nation. Researchers claim that 250,000 Americans die annually due to medical errors, nearly 100,000 more than those who die...
In 2011, The Joint Commission ruled that physicians and practitioners were forbidden from using text messaging to send patient care orders. Now the accreditor has reversed its ruling, and effective immediately hospital staff are allowed to send orders for care, treatment, and services via text...
In the May edition of The Joint Commission Perspectives, The Joint Commission announced its new Survey Analysis for Evaluating Risk (SAFER) matrix will be replacing the current scoring methodology, which includes Category A and Category C as well as elements of performance. The SAFER...
A recent report from a federal watchdog agency offers new insight into the barriers hospitals still face when it comes to addressing patient safety concerns, offering a concise distillation of the key gaps that remain in ongoing efforts to prevent patient harm.
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 5
Veteran accreditation professionals don't get too excited with the biannual release of The Joint Commission's list of most-cited standards because they know what's coming: safety, safety, and more safety.
Reusable medical devices carry a special risk of infection if they aren't properly reprocessed and sterilized. This fact was clarified in recent months when scores of infection outbreaks and dozens of deaths were linked to defective endoscopes. Many of these outbreaks involved...