Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety / Joint Commission Resources
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Sep 2012
Randomized Controlled TrialIs it possible to identify risks for injurious falls in hospitalized patients?
Patient falls are among the most commonly reported adverse hospital events with more than one million occurring annually in the United States; approximately 10% result in serious injury. A retrospective study was conducted to determine predictors and outcomes of fall injuries among a cohort of adult hospitalized patients. ⋯ Few variables were able to distinguish patients who sustained injury after a hospital fall, further challenging clinicians' efforts to minimize hospital-related fall injury.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Sep 2012
Volume-related differences in emergency department performance.
Emergency departments (EDs) are an important source of care for a large segment of the population of the United States. In 2009 there were more than 136 million visits to the ED each year, and more than half of hospital admissions begin in the ED. Measurement and monitoring of emergency department performance has been prompted by The Joint Commission's patient flow standards. A study was conducted to attempt to correlate ED volume and other operating characteristics with performance on metrics. ⋯ ED volume, which also correlates with many operating characteristics, is the strongest predictor of operational performance on metrics and can be used to categorize EDs for comparative analysis. Operating characteristics indicative of acuity also influence performance. The findings suggest that ED performance measures should take ED volume, acuity, and other characteristics into account and that these features have important implications for ED design, operations, and policy decisions.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Sep 2012
Improving team performance during the preprocedure time-out in pediatric interventional radiology.
The preprocedure time-out is a high-profile safety measure, and compliance is coming under increasing scrutiny. A checklist-based scoring system was developed to rigorously assess compliance, and a system of video monitoring and feedback was used to track performance and improve the time-out process in pediatric interventional radiology. ⋯ The combination of a time-out checklist, recorded procedures, review, and feedback produced not only improvements in time-out performance but also improvements in the scoring system and time-out process.