Quality & Patient Safety Newsletters

Briefings on Accreditation and Quality Patient Safety Monitor

Patient Safety Monitor is a searchable, web-based crosswalk that organizes state, CMS, and Joint Commission requirements by topic. It also provides access to news and analysis on dozens of the most challenging patient safety issues via the monthly journal, the tools and templates library, and the weekly e-newsletter.

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Issue 12, December 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Preventing CAUTI and VTE: A national imperative

  The Affordable Care Act required the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop...

• Keeping obese patients safe through surgery

  The U.S. population is growing in size. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates...

• NQF endorses pediatric quality measures

  In August, the National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed 41 new measures of pediatric care quality...

• Social media: Patient friend or foe?

  By now, HIPAA is well known to the healthcare community. Hospital staff and physicians have long...

• Forming a new field of patient safety in the face of healthcare reform

• Provision of Care standards

  Test staff members' knowledge of The Joint Commission's Provision of Care standards with the...

Issue 11, November 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Keeping patients safe from radiation errors

  In healthcare facilities across the United States, ­x-rays and CT scans are used widely and...

• Suicide risk: Solutions to rapid assessment and documentation

  In November 2010, The Joint Commission issued a Sentinel Event Alert requiring all hospitals to...

• Don't wait for the guy playing solitaire next to you at the conference

    I've been attending a lot of patient safety and quality conferences lately-‘tis the...

• Infection control standards

  Quiz staff with these questions related to The Joint Commission's infection control standards...

Issue 10, October 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• What makes a positive patient experience?

  Hospitals have been working toward better patient satisfaction for years. Now, with patient...

• Quality Colloquium sets tone of accountability, communication, and patient engagement

  The 10th annual National Quality Colloquium in Cambridge, MA, focused on patient engagement and...

• Hand hygiene videos: The latest in reducing healthcare-associated infections

  Wash your hands. It's a message that infection control (IC) professionals cannot stress enough, yet...

• What might patient safety have to do with the joy and spirit of caregiving?

  With the advent of electronic health record implementation, never-ending administrative duties...

Issue 9, September 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Joint Commission addresses wrong-site surgery

  This fall, The Joint Commission Center for Transforming­ Healthcare will release its Targeted...

• Diffusing disruptive physician behavior

  Disruptive behavior can come in a variety of forms, from yelling and inappropriate language to...

• Do you know your hospital? Event reporting helps quality improvement and patient safety efforts

  Most of the time when a patient is ill, an x-ray, scan, or lab test is needed to obtain more...

• Challenging the 'business as usual' patient interaction

  I was recently out to a business lunch and had an amazing server who clearly delighted in the work...

• Should we move ICU patients into interior hallways ­during a tornado warning?

    Q During a tornado watch or warning, should we move ICU patients to an interior hallway...

Issue 8, August 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Technology at the bedside may aid future of patient safety, quality

  Many hospitals have implemented electronic medical records (EMR) or are currently doing so, and the...

• New NPSG addresses CAUTIs

  The Joint Commission released a new National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) on May 17. The new goal...

• Joint Commission: PC.01.02.03 one of top compliance issues

  The May issue of The Joint Commission Perspectives contained the top 10 standards compliance issues...

• Occurrence reporting: Understanding the fundamentals to a successful program

  The following is an excerpt from Occurrence Reporting: Building a Robust Problem Identification and...

• Disruptive provider behavior: Nature or nurture?

  A look at the patient safety literature as well as recent popular media leaves no doubt that what...

• Record of care quiz

  Use this record of care quiz to test staff members' knowledge of Joint Commission standards...

• NQF releases updated serious reportable events

  The National Quality Forum (NQF) released a list of approved serious reportable events (SRE) in...

Issue 7, July 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Improving quality in the ED

  Missed diagnoses in the ED are often considered to be unfortunate errors on the physician's...

• Alliance program empowers frontline staff

  A culture of safety can be an elusive concept, making it difficult to create and even harder to...

• Two med management standards in top 10 most frequent Joint ­Commission compliance issues

• Does better service excellence mean better care quality?

• Medical interpreters key to patient communication, safety

  According to Joint Commission standards and federal law, patients have the right to effective...

• National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS)

  These 14 CLAS standards are organized by themes: Culturally Competent Care (Standards 1-3...

• Provision of care

  Test staff on their provision of care knowledge. Answers are on p. 12.

Issue 6, June 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• What Partnership for Patients hopes to achieve

  U.S. Department of Health and ­Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a new...

• Focusing on central line-associated bloodstream infections

  In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Healthcare Infection Control...

• Social networking: Staying on the pulse of patient safety on the front line

  Editor's note: The following column is written by Columnist Catherine Hinz, MHA, who currently...

• Making patients safer in the OR

  A pediatric patient at Shands Healthcare at the University of Florida, Gainesville made it to the...

• What should we expect from The Joint Commission's ­communication standards?

  Q What should we expect from The Joint Commission in terms of patient-provider communication...

Issue 5, May 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Early warning scoring system combines with EHR

  Sometimes a patient's declining condition is obvious. But in a busy hospital with patients who are...

• NICU eliminated CLABSIs in multiyear project

  A team approach to reducing infections resulted in the neonatal ICU (NICU) of Children's Hospital...

• Leverage current strengths

  Ten years ago at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, two patient safety culture assessment...

• Organizational issues for prevention of HAIs and the systemic nature of the problem

  You can't read anything about patient safety and quality or health reform without running into the...

• What must be documented when a nurse receives a critical test result?

  Q: What must be documented in the medical record when a critical test result is reported from the...

• Communication quiz

  Test staff members' knowledge of communication standards with the following quiz.

• IHI releases guidelines on managing aftermath of adverse events

  No one in healthcare ever wants to hear about a ­serious clinical adverse event occurring...

Issue 4, April 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Power in numbers: State collaborative wins Eisenberg award

  Most healthcare leaders agree that quality improvement is a team effort. But the question is, how...

• Increasing nurse-physician communication

  Physicians and nurses learn their practices in different schools. Their schedules are different...

• The inescapable truth that culture trumps again

    How humbling it is to shadow the steps of our frontline caregivers. Previously in this...

• New beds and protocols lead to decrease in falls

  Patient falls are one of the most common adverse events in a hospital setting, making them an easy...

• What is a good way to test our medication management and first-dose review?

    What is a good way to test our medication management and first-dose review?

• Suicide risk assessment quiz

   Use this quiz to train staff members on suicide risk assessment and compliance.

Issue 3, March 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Eliminating preventable harm by defining it

  As patient safety, infection control, and quality improvement professionals continue toward their...

• Decreasing ’door to doc’ time by 87%

  Many patients’ first experience with a hospital happens in the ED. Hospitals know this and...

• The true meaning of transformation in healthcare

  When you read the words “patient safety” or “quality,” what images...

• Technology overload: An alarming danger

  Beep. Beep. Beep. The telltale noise of a hospital is the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps of the...

Issue 2, February 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• IHI National Forum focuses on partnering with patients

  Healthcare providers face a number of difficult challenges in the year ahead, only one of which is...

• As the diet wheel turns, errors decrease

  In July 2008, a diabetic patient at Methodist LeBonheur Germantown (TN) Hospital looked down at...

• Taking slow and steady steps toward better care

  When I was first accepted into my graduate program for healthcare administration, I remember...

• Get docs on board with QI projects

    Quality improvement (QI) and patient safety projects are tough to implement. Most...

• Joint Commission announces revised med rec goal

  The Joint Commission recently announced approved revisions of the National Patient Safety Goal...

Issue 1, January 1, 2011 - VIEW THE FULL ISSUE

• Better teams, better checklists, better care

  Medication errors, patient identification errors, and surgical errors are some of the unfortunate...

• Critical to your QI efforts: Engaging busy bedside nurses

  Improving nursing-sensitive indicators (NSI) or organizational indicators with a nursing component...

• New year, new patient safety resolutions

  As cliché as it might sound, the start of a new year brings a new opportunity to pause and...

• Can you give us a review of current Universal Protocol?

  Q. Can you give an update on Universal Protocol™? What is currently expected of us?

• Patient Safety Monitor Journal 2010 index

  Case studies California hospital develops electronic med rec application. March, p. 8. Capturing...