Hospitals, healthcare organizations, health insurers, and medical societies in Massachusetts are coming together to take a significant step toward encouraging physicians to seek treatment for mental health conditions and/or drug misuse.
Review and update hospital policies and procedures now that The Joint Commission (TJC) has overhauled and even pared down its Infection Prevention and Control (IC) chapter—with one notable new requirement.
When assessing the needs of each patient, don’t forget to ask about religious requirements, including patients who are seeking care virtually or engaging in education through hospital-provided tablets or other devices.
CMS officials are calling for more federal oversight of accrediting organizations (AO) due to unhappiness with patient safety mistakes they learn about from the news media and with problems identified by CMS surveyors but seemingly missed by AOs.
CMS’ State Operations Manual, Appendix A, offers interpretive guidelines for its own state surveyors and generally has been held as the guide for all the accrediting bodies. It outlines the tasks that accompany the survey process for hospitals, from off-site survey preparation to post-...
Effective immediately, CMS says texting of patient information and of patient orders is permissible—with some caveats. In a memo to CMS state survey agency directors on February 8, CMS noted that due to technological advances in encryption and more secure interfaces between information...
The Accreditation Commission for Health Care’s (ACHC) recent Quality Review Edition of its publication TheSurveyor for acute care hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAH) examined the most...
Almost 90% of hospitals surveyed by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, were cited for deficiencies under one of the accrediting organization’s main infection prevention and control (IPC) standards.
If you have reason to believe your hospital may be subject to a complaint investigation by your accrediting organization (AO) or CMS, the best strategy is to be prepared with documentation, including evidence of how the patient safety problem was handled and what, if any, corrective measures...
Ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) are being reminded of the importance of having complete documentation in patients’ medical records.
