A new initiative by the Joint Commission will help hospitals put an end to identified practices that endanger or inhibit quality patient care. The Joint Commission announced yesterday that it has launched the Center for Transforming Healthcare, and will team up with top hospitals and healthcare systems across the country to identify the causes that harm patient care and develop solutions to eliminate those causes. The Center’s first targeted initiative will focus on hand-washing failures as a critical patient safety problem. The next challenge will focus on patient “hand-offs,” i.e., transferring patient responsibilities from one provider to another in the hospital, such as during staff changes.
Center representatives believe that its initiatives, along with the help and collaboration of some of the top hospitals and healthcare systems in the country, will lead to “the development and testing of targeted, long-lasting patient safety solutions” that can “help transform American health care into a high-reliability industry that ensures patients receive the safest, highest quality care they expect and deserve.”
For more information on the Center for Transforming Healthcare, click here.