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JCAHO announces 2006 Patient Safety Goals for all settings

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, August 25, 2005

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Ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) have two new National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) requirements to implement by January 1, 2006.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) released its annual list of goals for each accreditation program, including ASCs, on May 31. For each program, the accreditor assigned two new goals or requirements and retired two goals or requirements into its standards manuals.

For ASCs, the new goal requirements are as follows:

• Goal 2 (improve communication among caregivers) requirement 2E-"Implement a standardized approach to 'hand-off' communications, including an opportunity to ask and respond to questions."

• Goal 3 (improve medication safety) requirement 3D-"Label all medications, medication containers (e.g., syringes, medicine cups, basins), or other solutions on and off the sterile field in perioperative and other procedural settings."

The two retirements-one goal requirement and one entire goal and its only requirement-for ASCs are as follows:

• Goal 3 requirement 3A-Remove all concentrated electrolytes from patient units.

• Goal 5 (improve infusion pump safety) and requirement 5A-All general-use and patient-controlled analgesia intravenous infusion pumps have free-flow protection.

The exact locations of the retired goals and requirements in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Ambulatory Care are not yet known, as the JCAHO will release its 2006 standards manuals in the fall after its annual Executive Briefings conference.

This is the fourth consecutive year the JCAHO has released NPSGs but the earliest it has made the announcement, likely to give organizations more time for implementation.

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