High reliability is a new term for an old concept: providing the highest quality products or services consistently and uniformly to all customers. There has been a host of tools, guidelines, initiatives, and programs focused on high reliability in nearly every industry....
There are two words hospital officials do not want to hear during a Joint Commission survey: "immediate threat."
Yet that was the harsh reality facing officials several months ago at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, a healthcare facility that has been widely...
Just as it has every year for the last 26 years, U.S. News & World Report recently released its hospital rankings for 2016-2017. This year, the organization named Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the best hospital in the country.
There was once a time when physicians played an authoritarian role. It was thought that the best medical outcomes were achieved when patients were left almost entirely in the dark, submitting to the medical expertise of the doctor.
Today's healthcare culture...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 10
Editor’s note:Beginning this month, Briefings on Accreditation and Quality (BOAQ) is publishing its articles on a weekly basis. Each week in Accreditation Insider, a new article from that month’s issue of BOAQ will be featured with a link to the article for subscribers to...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 10
In August, CMS announced a few changes to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), changing how pneumonia readmissions are calculated and making excessive coronary artery bypass grafts readmission punishable. These seemingly small changes are expected to save CMS $538...
Sentinel events involving falls and the unintended retention of a foreign body were neck and neck through the first half of 2016, according to a release from The Joint Commission.
Both types of sentinel events were reported 52 times during the first two quarters of 2016. Surgical...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 27, Issue 10
The Joint Commission's new standards for residential and outpatient eating disorder programs went into effect on July 1. The standards expand and add more specific guidelines on the care of eating disorder patients. It's important to note that these standards only appear in the...
Amid mounting evidence that contact precautions may not be necessary to prevent the transmission of certain infections, experts are calling for hospitals to reconsider what has been a staple of infection prevention guidelines for decades.
