Data from the most recent report on medication errors compiled by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) supports several key patient safety goals outlined by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in the areas of patient identification, communication, high-alert medications, and use of infusion pumps.
JCAHO provides accreditation to U.S. hospitals and health care facilities and is working to achieve high patient safety standards in the U.S. health care system-a goal that USP is also committed to reaching in the area of medication errors.
All JCAHO-accredited hospitals and healthcare facilities are required to implement JCAHO’s 2004 National Patient Safety Goals by Jan.1, 2004. Each goal includes no more than two succinct, evidence-or expert-based requirements. JCAHO’s 2004 National Patient Safety Goals focus caregivers on a variety of patient safety issues, specifically:
1. Improve the accuracy of patient identification;
2. Improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers;
3. Improve the safety of using high-alert medications;
4. Eliminate wrong-site, wrong-patient and wrong-procedure surgery;
5. Improve the safety of using infusion pumps;
6. Improve the effectiveness of clinical alarm systems; and
7. Reduce the risk of health care acquired infections.
“This year, USP’s annual MEDMARX report on U.S. hospital medication errors released data that focus attention on four of the six key JCAHO 2003 National Patient Safety Goal requirements,” said Diane Cousins, R.Ph., vice president of USP’s Center for the Advancement of Patient Safety (CAPS). “Our common vision is to achieve a hospital system where no medication errors reach or harm hospitalized patients.”
Of the four JCAHO National Patient Safety Goal requirements supported by the MEDMARX data:
1. Misidentified or “wrong patient” types of errors were seen in 4.7
percent of the 2002 database records and involved every phase of the medication
use process;
2. Communication issues combined were found to be the third leading cause of
errors;
3. About nine percent of the MEDMARX records involving errors with infusion
pumps were harmful to patients; and
4. Insulin, morphine and heparin continue to be the top three high-alert
medications involved in medication errors.