Accredit Organization: The Joint Commission

Goal three by the National Patient Safety Goal for 2014 is to use medicines safely. Many errors occur regularly with medications which is why communication is so important with the doctors, nurses and patients. One process that Joint Commission requires in accredited HCO’s is medication reconciliation “creating the most accurate list possible off all medications a patient is taking, including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route, and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders with the goal of providing correct medications to the patients at all transition points within the hospital (Finkelman & Kenner, 2012, p. 388)”. Ensuring medication reconciliation to the patient, health providers and any new consults that are

Each year, roughly 1.5 million adverse drug events (ADEs) occur in acute and long-term care settings across America (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2006). An ADE is succinctly defined as actual or potential patient harm resulting from a medication error. To expound further, while ADEs may result from oversights related to prescribing or dispensing, 26-32% of all erroneous drug interventions occur during the nursing administration and monitoring phases (Anderson & Townsend, 2010). These mollifiable mishaps not only create a formidable financial burden for health care systems, they also carry the potential of imposing irreversible physiological impairment to patients and their families. In an effort to ameliorate cost inflation, undue detriment, and the potential for litigation, a multifactorial approach must be taken to improve patient outcomes. Key components in allaying drug-related errors from a nursing perspective include: implementing safety and quality measures, understanding the roles and responsibilities of the nurse, embracing technological safeguards, incorporating interdisciplinary collaborative efforts, and continued emphasis upon quality control.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA 2009), the wrong route of administrating medication accounts for 1.3 million injuries each year. An article published in September issue of the Journal of Patient Safety estimates there are between 210,000 and 400,000 deaths per year associated with medical errors. This makes medical errors the third leading cause of deaths in the United States, behind that comes heart disease and cancer. To prevent medical errors always follow the Three Checks and most importantly the Rights of Medication Administration. The “Rights of Medication Administration” helps to ensure accuracy when administering medication to a patient. When administering medication the administer should ensure they have the Right Medication, Right Patient, Right Dosage, Right Route, Right Time, Right Route, Right Reason, and Right Documentation. Also remember the patient has the right to refuse, assess patient for pain, and always assess the patient for signs of effects.

2. The hospital has failed to place a policy into effect for licensed personnel that address the issue of look-a-like and sound-a-like medications that it stores and dispenses. The Joint Commission requires hospitals to take preventative action to reduce and prevent errors that involve medications that can be interchanged and appear on the list.

5. The Patient Safety Officer will train the risk assessment team members on the proactive risk assessment process and how to conduct a proactive risk assessment, including the assessment of risk, itself.

Medication safety committee reviews reported medication errors and determine if the errors were due to a process that can be addressed and they can possibly eliminate the errors. Pharmacists, physicians and nursing

The history of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals is a story of the health professions’ commitment to patient care of high quality in the 20th century. According to Dr. Ernest Codman, founder of the accreditation system, which would enable hospitals to track every patient it treat long enough to determine whether or not the treatment was effective. If not, the hospital would figure out how to prevent similar failures in the future (Roberts, Coale & Redman, 1987).

An accreditation organization of United States is going to conduct inspection by the Joint Commission (JCAHO) for which Nightingale Community Hospital is doing preparation. For safeguarding the safety of patient, used recommended medical symbols is a very important factor for healthcare delivery. The correct policies are properly identified, prevented, reported and measured at the time of execution is reviewed along with current compliances in system will be covered in the summary.

The Joint Commission is an accrediting agency that evaluates the services provided by health institutions and recognize that after their assessments meet all requirements. This visit is requested by the institution and after being accredited are visited every three years. “The Joint Commission is working to align and improve how accreditation and certification work together to enhance their value to organizations” (Horn, 2012, p.243). It is a prestige by being accredited by the Joint Commission. The hospital institution is evaluated in all aspects evaluated from the triage is performed in the ER, permits, documentation, security, administration of drugs, surgical procedures, to infection control and other aspects that are related to the safety

The Joint Commission is part of the pharmacy laws and was formed in 1951 as a not for profit organization and is used for the safety of patients and pharmacy workers. The Joint Commission developed a “Do Not Use List” to help both the doctors and pharmacy workers take notice to the mistakes that can be made with just one mark in the wrong place or not on the prescription at all. There are many examples but just one is QOD and Q.O.D this is a difference of every day versus every other day, and could make someone have a hard time getting over an illness or becoming something different1. If a pharmacy tech thinks that a prescription does not look like it is written correctly, he/she should contact the prescribing

Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.

November of 2004, medical abbreviations supported the "Do Not Use" list. They created a website and in approximately four weeks, Joint Commission received tons and tons of responds and comments. And more than 80% supported the "do not use "list. Reason why so many use it is because some pharmacists in the forms misunderstand some of the stuff that is written. In 2001, The Joint Commission a Sentinel Event Alert on the subject of medical abbreviations. They are also the ones that in 2004, The Joint Commission created its "do not use" list.

A physician could make mistakes in prescribing, the pharmacy could send the wrong medication, but who actually gave it to the patient is accountable for the consequences. For this reason, it’s our responsibility to implement change in our practice based on the evidence in order to ensure safe patient care.

The safety of the patient is a worldwide issue and is not a single hospitals problem as noted by Aiken et al. (2012). According to Van Den Bos et al. (2011) some of the ways that patients could be harmed includes poor application of technology that is meant to reduce errors in health care. According to Tzeng et al., 2013 patients die unnecessarily year after year due to medical harm that can be prevented. The 2011 report by the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) revealed that over 98,000 of medical harm resulted in death which is about 38% of the fatalities related to medication errors (Classen et al., 2011).This has prompted the organizations and government Agencies such as Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to continually

Since the perception of patient safety has arisen, many medical organizations were striving to improve medication safety. Emory Healthcare, the largest and most comprehensive health care system in Georgia, was one of them who were seeking ways to prevent medication errors. In recent years, some