Editor's Note Energy and Commerce Committee leaders on March 9 sent letters to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and four hospital accrediting organizations to provide information about the hospital survey process and CMS oversight of the organizations by March 23. The letters were sent after questions were…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission is revising its standards to better address risks related to fluoroscopy in the Ambulatory Care, Critical Access Hospital, Hospital, and Office-Based Surgery accreditation programs. The changes are being made to further promote patient safety and quality of care in addition to aligning the accreditation requirements…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on March 7 announced that an updated THKR Outpatient Performance Measurement Implementation Guide is now available for its Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement (THKR) Certification program. The update includes the 2018 CPT codes. Joint Commission Online Weekly Newsletter Read More >>

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 28 announced the update of its sentinel event statistics for 2017. Of 805 reports reviewed, the Top 10 events most frequently reported included: unintended retention of a foreign body−116 events (first place) wrong-patient, wrong-site, wrong-procedure−95 events (third place) medication error−32 events (eighth place)…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 26 posted a reminder that whenever non-waived laboratory services are provided on-site (either directly or through contract) within a Joint Commission accredited facility, a separate 2-year cycle laboratory accreditation survey must also be conducted either by the Joint Commission or one of its…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 21 announced that it has created specific versions of 19 elements of performance (EPs) for deemed ambulatory surgical centers and specific versions for federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics to improve access in the E-dition. The EPs were added for the Centers…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced on February 21 that users of the Center for Transforming Healthcare’s Targeted Solutions Tool (TST) for Hand Hygiene can now record their observations on any mobile device or tablet by downloading a mobile app from the Google Play or Apple app store. The mobile…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 14 announced that the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) has launched a new initiative for US hospitals to complete their attestation when renewing their NPDB registrations. The NPDB is a repository of reports on medical malpractice payments and adverse actions related to healthcare…

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Editor's Note Strictly enforcing a ban on skullcaps in the OR had no impact on surgical site infection (SSI) rates in this study, presented at the annual Academic Surgical Congress in Jacksonville, Florida. The analysis included American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) data on 1,901…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on February 14 announced that accredited hospitals should start thinking about electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) success stories to share in the 2018 Pioneers in Quality Proven Practices Collection. Proven Practices was launched last year and is a peer-to-peer sharing of specific practices that an…

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