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Compliance with The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) 3 in 2008 will require accredited organizations to pay close attention to their assessment and monitoring of patients who are on anticoagulation therapy.
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You have switched from razors to clippers to remove hair, you developed strict, scientifically based protocols for administration of prophylactic antibiotics, and your staff scrub their hands in the proper manner. Although all of these steps reduce the risk of infection in the operating room, have you checked your staff's nails?
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Patient safety goals and all standards related to patient safety top the list of items focused upon by The Joint Commission surveyors, according to outpatient managers surveyed during recent months.
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Anyone can make a list of medications dictated by a patient, but to fully comply with The Joint Commission's requirement to reconcile medications taken by your patient, your documentation needs to address more than just the name of the medication.
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This is the first of a two-part series on sponsoring community events and open houses. In this month's issue, we cover open houses. In next month's issue, we will give suggestions for handling the media.
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One of the first steps to take for a successful survey is to make sure that staff members who know the location of all documents needed by the surveyor are at work when the surveyor arrives.
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I was posed with an interesting question from the editor of Same-Day Surgery a few days ago: "If you lie awake at night worrying about work, what is it that you worry about?"
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Paying attention to details, knowing your contracts, standardizing supplies and equipment, and being willing to purchase large volumes from one vendor can result in significant savings for outpatient surgery programs.
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Outpatient surgery programs are so busy that staff members are required to wear many hats. When it comes to the responsibility for cost control, your efforts may not be successful if the staff member perceives this is a secondary responsibility. Even if you decide to make cost control a priority for a staff member, not all administrative or board members view the position as necessary.
