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 proposed National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) released by The Joint Commission in February takes aim at judicious use of computed tomography (CT) imaging among pediatric patients, requiring hospitals to follow evidence-based guidelines when considering CTs for minor head trauma.
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.
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 5
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...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 5
Suicides were the third most common sentinel event of 2015, with 95 reported cases in 2015's Sentinel Event Statistics. The total number of patient suicides reported to The Joint Commission is now up to 1,184 since the start of the decade.
