Joint Commission lists 2018 National Patient Safety Goals

The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals for 2018 are listed for eight organization types: ambulatory, behavioral care, critical access hospital, home care, hospital, laboratory services, nursing care center and office-based surgery.

The goals differ for each program and, although much of it is focused on clinical care issues, there are some goals in which facility and environmental services managers are often involved, such as improving management of clinical alarm systems and reducing the risk of health care-associated infections by improving access to hand-hygiene systems.

NFPA advice for conducting risk analysis of mass-notification systems

The National Fire Protection Agency’s Ron Coté recently wrote about NFPA 101 Life Safety Code’s recommendations on risk analysis for mass-notification systems. The provision is new to the 2018 edition and, although it is not mandatory for all facility types, it addresses a key safety issue.

The inclusion of this section “in the 2018 edition of the code will, undoubtedly, generate awareness of mass notification, so a requirement for implementing the systems identified as needed by the required risk analyses can be added to a subsequent edition of the code,” Coté writes. 

Study: Single-room design reduced spread of MDROs in intensive care unit

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to determine if the design of an intensive care unit (ICU) had an effect on reducing multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs). The researchers covered two separate periods of one hospital: between January 2002 and April 2009 in the old multiple-occupancy ICU and between May 2009 and March 2013 in the new single-room ICU.

With infection prevention efforts being equal in both settings, the researchers found that MDROs remained high in the original facility, but marked a sustained decrease after transitioning to the new ICU. The researchers conclude that single-room ICU design positively impacts a reduction of MDROs.

Joint Commission to debut new ambulatory care accreditation survey report  

The Joint Commission is introducing a redesigned and more user-friendly accreditation survey report for its ambulatory care program. Kay Kruse, project director of business transformation, accreditation and certification operations, writes that “our customers asked that the report highlight the most relevant information about their ambulatory care survey outcomes, and the required follow-up activities.”

Other customer requests were to:

  • Prioritize and group survey findings by severity.
  • Highlight CMS condition-level and standard-level findings.
  • Offer report sorting/filtering. 
  • Remove repetitive text.