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To help hospitals improve performance and consistently provide the highest-quality care, the Joint Commission publishes their National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG) annually.
These standards apply to all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals and behavioral health care organizations.
In 2021, we explored three crucial insights from that year’s report: Identifying and Preventing Patient Suicide Risks, Preventing Mistakes in Surgery, and Reducing Anticoagulant-Associated Patient Safety Risks.
However, since the core safety goals outlined in the NPSG 2022 report remain the same, this blog summarizes the lessons we’ve learned, and how MEDHOST services and solutions can help healthcare providers continue to meet these standards.
According to a study from The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, there are approximately 30,000 suicides per year in the United States. Approximately 5 to 6 percent of those suicides occur in hospitals. In addition, the overall suicide rate is markedly higher in rural areas than in cities.
To help hospitals effectively meet the NPSG standard for compliance, The Joint Commission identifies seven elements of performance (EP) designed to decrease suicide rates in this high-risk group.
To support emergency departments in these efforts, MEDHOST Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) provides screening tools that can be configured to a facility’s specific community health needs, including custom charting options that can be used to identify patients at risk for suicide.
The Joint Commission estimates that 40 to 60 wrong site surgeries happen every week in the United States. A wrong site surgery occurs when a surgical procedure is conducted on the wrong part of the body, or even on the wrong patient.
To improve standardization in surgical scheduling, pre-op, and operating room processes, The Joint Commission suggests providers adhere to the following Universal Protocols for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, and Wrong Person Surgery™.
To help hospitals protect their surgery patients from mistakes that can lead to identification errors, we have made standardization a key feature of our surgical platform, MEDHOST Perioperative Experience. This solution gives users the ability to add checklists that lend clarity and structure to the perioperative experience, ensuring procedures occur at the right place and time.
Anticoagulant medications are important in preventing and treating blood clots. However, oral anticoagulants, such as warfarin and direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), are also the most common cause of ADEs in older adults, often leading to ER visits and hospitalizations. In 2017, bleeding events from oral anticoagulants led to over 235,000 emergency room visits.
The NPSG identifies eight anticoagulation therapy requirements that apply to all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals, as well as ambulatory and nursing care centers.
Once your facility has anticoagulation policies and protocols in place, you can create orders sets for physicians to use in the Order Management module of MEDHOST Physician Experience.
To learn more about how MEDHOST helps support National Patient Safety Goal compliance, please reach out to us at inquiries@medhost.com or call 1.800.383.6278.
