Nursing

Web site spotlight: Proposed changes to National Patient Safety Goals

Nurse Leader Weekly, August 31, 2009

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

On May 12, The Joint Commission released proposed changes to the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG), effective in 2010. The Joint Commission collected feedback on these proposed changes through June.

One of the most problematic and frequently cited NPSG elements of performance (EP) is NPSG.02.01.01, which addresses how organizations handle reporting of critical test results to physicians.

In 2006, based on The Joint Commission's annual report, only 61.4% of the organizations surveyed saw improvement in effectively communicating results deemed critical to patient care. Since its addition as an EP related to NPSG 2, effective communication, organizations have struggled to define "the list," establish reasonable reporting time frames, determine documentation strategies to facilitate data collection, and improve the reporting of this critical information to advance patient care.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from the article, "Proposed changes to National Patient Safety Goals" featured in The Reading Room on HCPro's online resource center, www.StrategiesforNurseManagers.com.

Do you need continuing education (CE) credits? Check out this month's CE article to learn about infection control in the MRI suite or visit our archives and view a compilation of CE articles (marked with an asterisk).



Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Nurse Leader Weekly!

Most Popular

Related Articles