Update: Defunct Links to/in the FAQ-niverse!
Greetings, fellow travelers!
With special thanks to Claire Rebouche for bringing this to my attention, it appears that the links to the new ligature risk FAQs that appeared in this week’s blog post no longer direct you to the content of the latest information (I swear to you that the links were working Monday), but rather direct you to the FAQ homepage. Now, that wouldn’t be such an awful thing if the latest FAQ (for the record, TJC describes it thusly: “Ligature Risks – Assessing and Mitigating Risk For Suicide and Self-Harm”) were readily discernible, but alas (at least for the moment), this particular FAQ is among the missing.
Rest assured, top people are working on trying to find out what’s going on, and hopefully this is but a temporary circumstance (I figure if we can’t find the information, the surveyors might be having a tough time as well—helps to level the playing field). One other thing to note is that where previously the ligature-related FAQs could be found in the EC section of the FAQ homepage, they’ve all been moved to the NPSG section (and, interestingly enough, increased the number of FAQs dealing with ligatures to just over 20), so you may want to keep an eye on any changes in that section (from a practical standpoint, I understand the shift, but I don’t know that they couldn’t have shown up in both sections as a transition, though perhaps they did—I don’t spend a lot of time monitoring the NPSG section of the FAQ page).
At any rate, what I suspect may be happening is that, in their efforts to “clean up” the FAQ page, it would seem that some of the internal links are no longer working, so I’m hoping that we’re just working through a funky transition period and everything will be up and running soon.
That said, there are a couple of other new items relative to the management of this at-risk patient population that I want to share (while they are still available): this one and this other one, which deal with how the process for managing at-risk patients can result in catastrophic gaps in care. I think they’re pretty straightforward in terms of information, but with everything else going on this week, I would encourage you to check ’em out sooner rather than later.
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is also a contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.