The Joint Commission in August announced a new scoring system for its hospital accreditation surveys. The new system goes into effect January 1, 2009, and brings with it several concerns in the field.

As of January 1, 2009, a revised Leadership standards chapter takes effect, detailing requirements for hospital leadership to build a greater culture of safety and adopt a more active role in the quality of care provided at facilities, as well as the quality of relationships between staff members. Some might say these changes have been building for more than a decade.

There was an interesting e-mail recently posted on a national patient safety listserv about a hospital that had implemented a “p-waste” program. Many hospitals wrote back asking, “What is p-waste?”

Q. Why is The Joint Commission now saying that, beginning in 2009, surgical timeouts should ideally be done before anesthesia is given? Does this mean we don’t position the patient for a timeout anymore? We certainly wouldn’t position the patient before he or she is put to sleep.This change has me a little perplexed.