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Controlled substance diversion is one of those things that every administrator thinks "could never happen to me. I don't have any thieves or drug abusers working here." In my 20 years of being a pharmacist consultant for surgery centers, I've heard that more times than I can count.
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One of the accreditation standards causing the most headaches for ambulatory organizations is the one on credentialing. In fact, statistics gathered by The Joint Commission indicated that for the first half of 2011, 48% of ambulatory organizations and 56% of office-based facilities were noncompliant with standard HR 02.01.03: The organization grants initial, renewed, or revised clinical privileges to individuals who are permitted by law and the organization to practice independently.
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Electronic health records, or EHRs, can be valuable tools for managers as they strive to comply with The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals. That's a clear message communicated in a recent commentary in The Journal of the American Medical Association; however, the authors take care to not only outline some best practices for EHR use, but to also review some of the challenges presented.
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We just opened our newest ambulatory surgery center (ASC) in Texas this week. We think it is our 206th, but we could be off on that number. While it is an ASC, there is some useful information for our hospital readers here. Please read on!
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In 2010, the number of unintended retentions of a foreign body jumped to the highest level since The Joint Commission started tracking statistics in 1995: 133 reported events. Already, through the third quarter of 2011, there have been 136 incidents reported to the agency.
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It could happen, says Eric Chiu, founder & president of HyTrust, a company in Mountain View, CA, that specializes in access control for data. It likely would be caused by someone employed or formerly employed at your organization, he says.
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In the first weeks of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, a physician became ill at a Chicago hospital and tested positive for the virus. Then other healthcare workers became ill and tested positive an outbreak that began at a time when the virus was not widespread in the community.
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In an era when controversial mandatory flu vaccine policies threaten to end up in some high court as a cause célèbre, The Joint Commission is urging healthcare organizations to go for the proverbial gold.
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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles will have to pay almost $4.7 million to a surgeon who claims the hospital retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on unsafe practices in his department, unless the hospital manages to have the award overturned.
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This month's SDS Accreditation Update includes a focus on the perennial and potentially disastrous problem of patient identification errors.