Accreditation Updates
To help provide you with latest accreditation information from Joint Commission Resources, we’ve created brief, informative video segments on the latest JCR updates.
Joint Commission Resources Quality and Safety Network
Accreditation Update: The Hand Hygiene Project
In December 2008, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare began work on its first improvement project: addressing failures in hand hygiene. The Hand Hygiene Project focuses on improving and sustaining hand hygiene compliance. Hand hygiene is critically important to safe, high quality patient care. Unfortunately, many infections are transmitted by health care personnel. To sustain improvement and make a difference, a simple slogan or campaign is not enough; demanding that health care workers try harder is not the answer. Comprehensive, systematic, and sustainable change is the only solution.
We encourage you to invite all hospital personnel to view this month's Accreditation Update to see what steps The Joint Commission is taking to help fight infection.
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Accreditation Update: Surgical Site Infections
Surgical site infections are a major cause of patient injury, mortality, health care cost, and prolonged hospitalization.
This month, the Center for Transforming Healthcare launched its fourth project which aims to reduce surgical site infections (SSI). This project is launched in collaboration with the American College of Surgeons and uses data derived from the ACS’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). The solutions for this project are targeted for publication in fall of 2011.
Accreditation Update: Hand-Off Communications
In August 2009, The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare began work on its second improvement project: improving the quality of hand-off communications. A hand-off is the transfer and acceptance of patient care responsibilities achieved through effective communication. Selected by eight leading hospitals and health systems, the Hand-Off Communications project team includes hospital leadership, clinicians and staff, and the Center’s Black Belts and Green Belts.
We encourage you to invite all hospital personnel to view this month's Accreditation Update to see what steps The Joint Commission is taking to help improve patient care through effective communication.
Accreditation Update: What's New For 2011
The Joint Commission will give Life Safety Code®* Specialists extra time on site during hospital and critical access hospital surveys, effective January 1, 2011. The Life Safety Code relates to critical patient safety issues in the environment, and The Joint Commission continues to focus on this area in alignment with its vision that all people always experience the safest, highest quality, best-value health care across all settings. Also beginning January 1, 2011, The Joint Commission will apply refined decision categories to accredited and certified organizations, and those applying for accreditation or certification, under all programs.
Accreditation Update: The Joint Commission's Report On Quality and Safety
According to improving America’s hospitals: the Joint Commission’s report on quality and safety 2010, Joint Commission–accredited hospitals are providing higher-quality, evidence-based care for heart attack, pneumonia, surgical care, and children’s asthma care.
View this Accreditation Update to learn about how this report, which focuses on accountability, measures for the first time, an effort to clearly demonstrate the impact that performance measures have on Improving patient outcomes.
The JCRQSN program is a monthly series of video conference training sessions produced by
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the distributor of the series and has no influence on the content.
To learn more, please contact Customer Service at support@jcrqsn.com or call 1-888-219-4678.
Accreditation Update: Targeted Solutions Tool
For the first time ever, Joint Commission accredited health care organizations have access to an application that simplifies the process for solving some of the most persistent health care quality and safety problems that exist within health care.
In this Accreditation Update, we will review the Targeted Solutions Tool or TST developed by the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare. The TST is an application that guides health care organizations through a step-by-step process to accurately measure their organization’s actual performance, identify their barriers to excellent performance, and direct them to proven solutions that are customized to address their particular barriers.
Accreditation Update: National Patient Safety Goals:
Infection Control and Suicide Risk
The Joint Commission has approved one new National Patient Safety Goal for 2012 that focuses on catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) for the hospital and critical access hospital accreditation programs. CAUTI is the most frequent type of health care-acquired infection (HAI), and represents as much as 80 percent of HAIs in hospitals. The new goal, NPSG.07.06.01, states: Implement evidence-based practices to prevent indwelling catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI).
Suicide ranks as the 11th most frequent cause of death in the United States. Suicide of a care recipient while in a staffed, round-the-clock care setting or within 72 hours of discharge has remained in the top 5 most frequently reported sentinel events to The Joint Commission since 1995. Identifying individuals at risk for suicide while under the care of, or after discharge from, a behavioral health care organization or a hospital psychiatric inpatient setting is an important first step in protecting and planning the care of at-risk individuals.
We encourage you to invite all hospital personnel to view this month's Accreditation Update to see what steps The Joint Commission is taking to address both CAUTI and Suicide Risk.
