On December 2, 2003, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) was joined by medical, nursing, and healthcare leaders to discuss issues surrounding wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong patient surgeries.
To date more than 40 organizations have endorsed a new Universal Protocol to standardize pre-surgery procedures for verifying the correct patient, the correct procedure, and the correct surgical site.
Representatives of various organizations attending expressed the opinion that patient safety was the highest priority. They strongly urged their members - surgeons, members of the surgical team, individual hospitals and other healthcare organizations - to follow the standardized procedures outlined in the Universal Protocol.
The Universal Protocol will officially become effective on July 1, 2004 for all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals, ambulatory care surgery centers, and office-based surgery sites. It was originally approved by the Board of Commissioners last summer. The major professional societies and other leadership organizations which participated in its development along with other key health care organizations were then invited to endorse the Universal Protocol.
Despite issuing Sentinel Event Alerts about wrong site surgery both in 1998 and again in 2001, the Joint Commission has continued to receive five to eight new reports of wrong site surgery every month. The Joint Commission's new National Patient Safety Goals, which became effective on January 1, 2003, include a Goal to eliminate wrong site surgery.