Accreditation

Tool helps hospitals meet EC.1.30 EP 5

Accreditation Connection, June 6, 2005

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) released a new clinical tool to help hospitals comply with EC.1.30 EP 5, which requires organizations to provide patients who smoke with education and information about options for smoking cessation, according to Medical News Today.

Helping Smokers Quit: A Guide for Nurses encourages nurses to follow the five A's of smoking intervention: Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, and Arrange. 

The JCAHO has collected data since 2002 on whether hospitals offer smoking cessation advice or counseling to patients diagnosed with heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia. Hospitals' compliance with the measure varies widely; however, the data consistently attributed a nurse's involvement to hospitals that performed well on this criteria.

To read more about this effort, click here for the Medical News Today story.

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