True or false: Psychiatric hospitals and acute hospitals that treat patients for behavioral or emotional illnesses need to have a process in place to identify patients who are at risk for suicide....

Looking for an accreditation specialist?...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced yesterday its Final Rule on Meaningful Use. The rule, intended to spell out exactly what will constitute healthcare parties’ appropria...

True or false: Informed consent includes information on the risks and hazards of a particular treatment, the alternatives or options available to the patient, the risks and hazards of the alternatives...

Until 2007, nurses at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis relied on traditional shift change reporting methods to communicate patient care information from caregiver to caregiver. But when cha...

Survey coordinators are challenged to help their organizations navigate accreditation requirements, assess their organization’s compliance, and coordinate survey visits. Today more than ever, wi...

Patients expect that every safeguard is in place when receiving healthcare services. The challenge is how to make this happen with the complexities of the system in which healthcare is delivered, as s...

Q. We are in the process of moving to an electronic system. How have other hospitals managed co-signatures on high-risk medications when nurses are scanning meds and patient IDs at the bedside? We wou...

Shelia Hull, RN, Joint Commission specialist at Pikeville (KY) Medical Center, was with the organization just a few months before the latest PPR was due to The Joint Commission. At that time, Hull and...

The concept of a just culture is relatively new to the healthcare industry and has become a critical and necessary component of any organization’s approach to improving patient safety. I have qu...