JCAHO:  New Patient Safety Goals Effective January 1st 2003

     Effective January 1st all Joint Commission Accredited organizations will be required to focus attention on a series of specific actions to prevent medical mistakes.  These actions will help to avoid confusion in identifying patients, miscommunication among caregivers, wrong-site surgery, unsafe use of infusion pumps, medication mix-ups and problems with equipment alarm systems.

     The required actions are in the new National Patient Safety Goals, which were developed by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.  The Joint Commission believes that taking these steps will have major impacts in reducing the frequency of devastating medical errors that affect thousands of patients each year.

     The six National Patient Safety Goals include 11 required actions for all accredited organizations that provide care relevant to the goals.  The expected actions include, among others:

• Making sure medicines are given to the right patient before giving medicines.  Using a room number to identify a patient is not sufficient.
• Reading back medical orders given over the phone.  This reduces the likelihood of miscommunications or misunderstandings.
• Standardizing abbreviations or symbols that are used in providing care.  For example, when "u" is handwritten to indicate units, it can often look like a zero and lead to incorrect medication dosages.
• Removing certain concentrated medications from patient care units.  If administered accidentally, these medications can be deadly.
• Marking the site where surgery is to be performed, e.g., the left foot, and involving the patient in the process.  This reduces the risk that surgery will be performed accidentally on the wrong side of the patient.
• Testing clinical alarm systems and assuring that clinical alarms can be heard at a distance and over the din of background noise.
• Assuring that all intravenous infusion pumps have "free-flow" protection.  This reduces the risk that patients will inadvertently receive medication overdoses.

      The Joint Commission intends to issue new or revised National Patient Safety Goals and requirements every year and will publish aggregate data on organization compliance with the requirements at the end of 2003.  Individual organization performance data will become available approximately one year later.

      To view more information on this topic go to the JCAHO Web site at, www.jcaho.org