National Patient Goals

In accordance with this the hospital makes sure we follow guidelines laid down by Joint commission Standards. The compliance includes four areas…Information management, Infection control, Communication and Medication Management. The Goal here is patient safety and providing patients with safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.

The Joint Commission focuses on certain goals each year. For patient safety and positive outcomes, hospitals are required to follow certain standards. National Patient Safety Goals were established in 2002 to help identify areas of concern with patient safety. This group is made up by a panel of experts including nurses, doctors, pharmacists and many other healthcare professionals. They advise the Joint Commission on how to address these different patient safety issues. Two goals to be discussed are improving the accuracy of patient identification and medication safety. To improve patient

The Priority Focus Area of Communication includes 3 Joint Commission (JC) standards relative to Universal Protocol. These 3 standards, which are components of the National Patient Safety Goals, are aimed at ensuring the correct

Reinvest current net income into interest accounts for future variable health care costs for years to come

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

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A.Nightingale Community Hospital is attempting to be in complete compliance with Joint Commission’s “communications” standards. Prior to the Joint Commission survey, Nightingale Community Hospital wanted to focus on items UP.01.01.01 through UP.01.03.01 of the Joint Commission handbook. According to the handbook, these items focus on the universal protocols for preventing wrong site, wrong procedure, wrong person surgery (2015). In response to these universal protocols, the hospital implemented a pre-procedure hand-off tool, which is completed and signed off by both the nurse handing off the patient as well as the nurse accepting the patient. The hospital also began

The National Patient Safety Goals were first developed in 2002 by the Joint Commission. The goals are established to help guide medical organizations to focus on which areas of patient safety need improving (Hudson 2016). The first set of goals were released and put in motion in 2003, prior to 2003 there were no policies or goals for an organization to set their sights on (Hudson 2016 page 2). A panel of experts advises the Joint Commission on the development of new goals or the updating of old ones. The panel is called the Patient Safety Advisory Group and is made up of nurses, risk managers, clinical engineers, and physicians (Hudson 2016). The National Patient Safety Goals have specific goals geared toward the type of medical organizations such as a critical access hospital, home care, behavioral health, and long term care services to name a few (Hudson 2016 page 2). The National Patient Safety Goals help protect patients and make sure providers are practicing safely across the board.

Accreditation provides a competitive advantage in the health care industry and strengthens community confidence in safety of care and treatment. Accredited hospitals provide higher quality of care to patients. It improves risk management and risk reduction and helps in organizing and strengthens patient safety efforts. It enhances recruitment and staff education and provides education on god practices to improve healthcare operations. The paper discusses how The Joint Commission assists in having better outcomes in terms of safety in Western Medical Center Hospital. In today’s society, every health care organization should provide a proof of accreditation and are subject to a three-year accreditation cycle. The Commission develops performance standards that address some of the important elements of operation, such as patient care, infection control, medication safety, and patient rights.

As the Joint Commission aims to nationally improve health care systems through health care organizations collaborations, it publishes recommended patient safety goals. As stated by the Joint Commission, “the first obligation of health care is to “do no harm””. The Joint Commission’s 2015 National Patient Safety Goals for hospitals include : Identify patients correctly; Improve staff communication; Use

The Joint Commission also addresses safety issues through the publication and distribution of the Sentinel Event which identifies a severe breach in safety and addresses ways on how to improve processes and to prevent harm in the future. It also publishes the National Patient Safety Goals which address healthcare safety and ways to solve problems that focus on issues such as identifying patients correctly, improving communication among staff, and administering medications safely, just to name a few. “A majority of Joint Commission standards are directly related to safety, addressing such issues as medication use, infection control, surgery and anesthesia, transfusions, restraint and seclusion, staffing and staff competence, fire safety, medical equipment, emergency management, and security. The standards also include requirements for preventing accidental harm; responding to patient safety events; and the organization’s responsibility to tell patients about the outcomes of their care” (TJC,

• Effective—providing services based on scientific knowledge to all who could benefit and refraining from providing services to those not likely to benefit (avoiding underuse and overuse).

In 2003, The Joint Commission made one of their first goals to improve the accuracy of identifying patients to reduce or eliminate patient identification errors. This continues to be an accreditation requirement. Their recommendations to do this are to use at least two patient identifiers when administering medications, and when providing treatments or procedures. Acceptable identifiers may be the individual’s name, an assigned identification number, telephone number, or other person-specific identifier. Patient room number or physical location may not be used as an appropriate identifier. Healthcare provides should re-identify the patient with each encounter, each medication pass, and each procedure. There have been procedures and protocols throughout the country have been put into place to make the care provided to patients safer. Another element of this requirement is that all containers should be labeled in the patients presences after using the patient identifiers

2012 Joint Commission Patient Safety Goals. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2014, from Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center: www.lovell.fhcc.va.gov/about/2012PatientSafetyGoals.pdf

Let’s begin by proceeding with the first and most important step, greet and identify the patient. Always ask his or her name and date of birth. It is necessary to make the patient feel welcomed and secure. Verifying their identity is a procedure for assurance that all given tests are not performed on wrong patients, this could result in wrong test results for the patient.