The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires disclosure of medical errors related to sentinel events. At the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, we have developed an effective curriculum for teaching third-year medical students this content. The instructional program lasts a half day and consists of large group lectures combined wi...

Endophthalmitis is a devastating complication of cataract surgery and occurs in about 0.1% of patients. However, few if any health care institutions have processes in place to monitor the rate of infection after cataract surgery. Such was the case at our institution, where complications associated with phacoemulsification procedures (cataract surgery) were neither monitored for nor reported. In...

Senior hospital executives responding to a 2005 national telephone survey conducted for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) report that Hospital Compare and other public reports on hospital quality measures have helped to focus hospital leadership attention on quality matters. They also report increased investment in quality improvement (QI) projects and in people and systems to ...

The adherence to the principles of the Universal Protocol for preventing wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong person surgical or invasive procedures is a requirement for all Joint Commission accredited organizations. Fine needle aspirations are considered invasive procedures, and cytopathologists performing this procedure need to be cognizant and compliant with the requirements of this Joint C...

Those overseeing clinical engineering (CE) functions at the top policy level--the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and others in the profession--depend on sporadic assessments of nonstandard samplings of data when analyzing CE functions such as maintenance compliance, risk and failure analysis, and inventory managemen...

OBJECTIVES Although JCAHO requires a standardised approach to handoffs, and while many standardised protocols have been tested, sign-out practices continue to vary. We believe this is due to the variability in workflow during inpatient duty cycle. We investigate the impact of such workflows on intern sign-out practices. DESIGN We employed a prospective, grounded theory mixed-method design. ...

We identify the frequency at which various IT management strategies (e.g., best of breed, best of suite, or singlevendor solutions) are pursued in U.S. hospitals. We also examine hospital characteristics that are associated with pursuing one strategy over another. After combining several secondary data sources, 3343 hospitals were analyzed. Of these, 61 percent indicated a single vendor; 29 per...

Auctions have emerged as the primary means of assigning spectrum licenses to companies wishing to provide wireless communication services. Since July 1994, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has conducted 33 spectrum auctions, assigning thousands of licenses to hundreds of firms. Countries throughout the world are conducting similar auctions. I review the current state of spectrum auct...

The October and November 2004 HHN Accreditation Strategies columns addressed the new Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (Joint Commission) home care and hospice survey process describing in detail components of each survey activity. This column builds on the foundation laid in the two columns and focuses on survey process nuances for complex organizations, specificall...

ON APRIL 4, 2007, THE CENTER FOR Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) convened an invitational meeting to examine the critical elements of regional healthcare partnerships for emergency preparedness and response and to facilitate communication among the federal officials, regional healthcare leaders and institutions, and other stakeholders. Participants included sen...