In April, The Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) put out an updated measures specifications manual that introduced two new core measures.
As reported earlier this year in Hospital Peer Review, The Joint Commission is taking a look at National Patient Safety Goal #8, medication reconciliation, with which hospitals are struggling. Now, it is taking a look at three other challenging goals; but unlike with medication reconciliation, the others still will impact accreditation decisions.
Frank Zibrat, associate director, ORYX implementation at The Joint Commission, says one of the areas hospitals are still struggling with regarding the core measures is the surgical care improvement project (SCIP) measures. Specifically, "the issue of the discontinuation of antibiotics and the selection of antibiotics."
A new emergency department (ED) triage system at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, FL, decreased the time that elapses between when patients arrive and when they are treated by 33%, slashed the number of patients who left without treatment by 50%, and cut 20 minutes off the total turnaround time from when patients arrive at the ED and when they are discharged or admitted.
