The Joint Commission is the latest healthcare heavy-hitter to call for better protection of healthcare workers, announcing the creation of Sentinel Event Alert 59, which addresses violence—physical and verbal—against healthcare workers. About 75% of workplace assaults occur in the healthcare and...
There’s one facet of accreditation that every patient safety provider ought to know about: Immediate Jeopardy (IJ).
The CMS State Operations Manual defines Immediate Jeopardy as “a situation in which the provider’s noncompliance with one or more requirements of participation has...
Last October the hospital was placed under immediate jeopardy following the death of a patient with dementia. After being admitted from a nursing home, the patient was given 10 times the maximum daily dose of a calcium channel blocker, causing a fatal overdose.
This March, nursing supervisor Nancy Swift was shot to death in her office at UAB Highlands Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. Swift had been reprimanding a central sterile supply worker, Trevis Coleman, when he pulled out a gun and fired on her. Afterwards, Coleman killed himself, but not before...
