BACKGROUND & AIMS To improve hospital health care delivery by identifying malnutrition in all admitted patients and following up those identified to be malnourished and "at risk of developing malnutrition" a hospital nutrition support program based on the JCAHO system was initiated in 1999. Two major problems were encountered: first, the inability to perform a nutrition surveillance process due...

The Department of Health & Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved the continuation of deeming authority for The Joint Commission’s hospital accreditation program through July 15, 2014. The CMS designation means that hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission may choose to be “deemed” as meeting Medicare and Medicaid certification requirements. CMS found ...

Professional standards of laboratory practice are partially derived from regulatory and accreditation standards of the federal government as well as those of non-government organizations and professional societies. These standards are monitored by on-site inspection and encompass personnel standards, patient test management requirements, quality control and assurance standards and proficiency t...

SELF-ASSESSMENT AND SELFdirected, lifelong learning have long been mainstays of the medical profession—they are activities presumed to be linked closely to the quality of care provided to patients. Physicians in the United States must demonstrate their engagement in lifelong learning by choosing and participating in continuing medical education (CME) activities and acquiring CME credit, which i...

Agreement on the processes of health care that are necessary to achieve healthcare quality goals is the foundation of performance measurement. In addition, standardization of performance measures themselves is essential to avoid confusion and undue burden among those whose performance is being measured. Recent work on cardiovascular performance measures establishes a new standard for how those ...

The first Brandon-Hill list was published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (BMLA) in 1965. Since then, the "Selected List of Books and Journals for the Small Medical Library" has become a widely used collection development tool for health sciences librarians. Although intended as a selection guide for small or medium-size libraries in hospitals or comparable medical facilities...

Data-sharing systems—where healthcare providers jointly implement a common reporting system to promote voluntary reporting, information sharing, and learning—are emerging as an important regional, state-level, and national strategy for improving patient safety. The objective of this chapter is to review the evidence regarding the effectiveness of these data-sharing systems and to report on the ...

THE Quality Improvement Guidelines for Adult Diagnostic Neuroangiography published in this issue of JVIR (1) is a clinical practice guideline produced by an interdisciplinary consensus group process to cover a crucial aspect of the care of patients with potentially devastating neurovascular disease. The document should be of intense interest to all those who desire to ensure quality of care for...

The scientific basis for claims of efficacy of nosocomial infection surveillance and control programs was established by the Study on the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infection Control project. Subsequent analyses have demonstrated nosocomial infection prevention and control programs to be not only clinically effective but also cost-effective. Although governmental and professional organizations have...