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The Joint Commission has added a new patient safety goal for 2008 that allows hospitals to comply with hand hygiene guidelines by the World Health Organization.
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The Joint Commission's new standard requiring hospitals to offer influenza vaccine to health care workers is showing some signs of initial impact, but the first real test will be the 2007-2008 flu season.
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How do you prove the value created by the employee health service? Perhaps you can show a reduction in injury rates or workers comp claims.
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Annual fit-testing is once again the unqualified rule for tuberculosis. A Congressional caveat that prohibited the U.S. Occupational Safety and Administration from using federal funds to enforce the annual fit-testing rule for TB has been defeated in the House of Representatives.
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Updated guidelines designed to prevent nosocomial transmission of diseases inject some new uncertainties in the efforts to protect health care workers.
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Hospitals are feeling even greater pressure to ask health care workers to sign declination statements if they don't receive the influenza vaccine.
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Almost half of hospital staff report there is room for improvement in the area of handoffs and transitions across units, according to the 2007 Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture Comparative Database Report released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
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Physician peer review has been an essential part of hospital quality since the American College of Surgeons first established minimum hospital standards in 1918. To this day an effective peer review process continues to be important.
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Data for every practitioner, analyzed frequently, with the right people in the loop you'll need to develop systems to ensure that all of these things happen on an ongoing basis, in order to comply with new medical staff standards from The Joint Commission.
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The traditional "bad apple" approach to peer review is changing to a new emphasis on performance improvement, says Nancy J. Auer, MD, FACEP, chief medical officer of Seattle-based Swedish Health Services.