JCAHO seeks input on patient safety goals

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has released a list of draft patient safety goals and requirements that may be included in the group's 2008 standards. Clinical goals include reducing post-operative risk for patients with obstructive sleep apnea, preventing catheter misconnections and reducing the likelihood of harm from anticoagulation therapy. On the administrative level, JCAHO's targets include preventing harm caused by worker fatigue. Among several recommendations, JCAHO's goals suggest that organizations identify tasks affected by worker fatigue levels, and bar excessively fatigued workers or those on extended duty hours from performing fatigue-sensitive tasks. The draft goals also ask organizations to improve the way they recognize and respond to changes in a patient's condition, and propose that healthcare organizations consider using improved technology for patient identification. JCAHO will accept feedback on the goals until January 26, 2007.

For more information on the draft goals:
- read the JCAHO release
- review the JCAHO 2008 Patient Safety Goals page

PLUS: The World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, the World Alliance for Patient Safety and the Commonwealth Fund have kicked off a seven-country project implementing five solutions intended to prevent avoidable catastrophic events in hospitals. Solutions address prevention of patient care hand-over errors, wrong site/wrong procedure/wrong person surgeries, continuity of medication errors and high concentration drug errors. They also include promotion of effective hand hygiene. Release

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