In March 2013, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) began presenting the results of its random audits for HIPAA and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act compliance. To date, the results have been discussed in two different presentations, which have been posted on the...
In July 2003, The Joint Commission proposed, as part of its Universal ProtocolTM procedures, a requirement for hospitals to perform a timeout immediately prior to a procedure. A year later, the requirement was in effect. Yet since then, even top-notch hospitals have dealt with...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 24, Issue 9
Every so often, the topic of steam sterilization comes up when discussing infection control issues. I recently came across a fantastic article in the Journal of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) discussing this very topic. The author, Paula Nania, MSN, RN, CNOR,...
Briefings on Accreditation & Quality - Volume 24, Issue 9
Hospitals have seen the publication of many important CMS memos in the past year. Many of these include interpretive guidelines that every hospital should know about. Hospitals should give one person the responsibility of checking the CMS site once a month for updates.
California's latest round of penalties for hospital blunders that resulted in patient harm or death includes a wrong-site surgery, feeding errors, a retained surgical object, and a number of unnecessary "emergency" coronary interventions. Click the link above to read more.
Not to belabor or otherwise abuse the deceased equine, I wanted to share with you a potential solution for those of you who might be struggling with high humidity levels in your surgical procedure areas. Click the link above to read more.
How would you prove that you communicate important quality and patient safety information to the members of the medical staff as well as to appropriate hospital staff?
A California physicians organization is finding that more doctors are dismissing patients because they are uncooperative, refuse to comply with treatment, exhibit drug-seeking behaviors, and increasingly threaten the safety of care providers. Click the link above to read on.
It’s been a fairly busy year when it comes to updates of standards and such and this week we’ll take a look at the new requirements relative to leadership and oversight of the Emergency Management (EM) function. Click the link above to read more.
