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These new patient safety goals become effective in the United States on Jan 1, 2003.
The National Patient Safety Goals released in July 2002 were promulgated by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' (JCAHO's) Sentinel Event advisory group and adopted and finalized by the Joint Commission's board of commissioners. The six goals will become effective Jan 1, 2003. They apply to entire organizations, including the perioperative area.
WHY NOW?
Patient safety has had a great deal of media coverage during the past few years. This is partly due to two reports published by the Institute of Medicine in 2000 and 2001.(1) Those reports discuss the number and types of medical errors that have occurred in medical institutions across the United States. The Joint Commission also has been on a crusade of its own to make patient care safer. This crusade began with the sentinel event standards and gained momentum with the publishing of the Joint Commission's Sentinel Event Alerts.2
The six National Patient Safety Goals that each institution must evaluate and implement before January 2003 include
improving the accuracy of patient identification;
improving the effectiveness of communication among caregivers;
improving the safety of high-- alert medications;
eliminating wrong-site, wrong-patient, wrong-procedure surgery;
improving the safety of infusion pumps; and
improving the effectiveness of clinical alarm systems.3
One might ask if there are alternatives to the recommendations made by the Sentinel Event advisory group. According to the JCAHO, Organizations can implement alternatives to the recommendations if those alternatives are determined, upon review by the Sentinel Event Advisory Group, to be at least as effective as the published recommendations in the goals. Failure by an organization to implement all of the recommendations or acceptable alternatives will result in a single special Type I recommendation. The process for reviewing alternative recommendations will be communicated to accredited organizations in a future issue of Joint Commission Perspectives and will be posted on JCAHO's web site.4
THE MAJOR GOALS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
There are approved recommendations for each goal, and this article lists each recommendation in the review of each goal. In addition, the article suggests ways to implement both the goal and the recommendations in the perioperative area. Many organizations already have instituted or begun instituting many of...