The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety is honored to publish articles on the recipients of the annual John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards. This year, a new category was created: individual achievement at the international level.

BACKGROUND Informed consent is an important part of the patients' rights and hospitals are assigned to obtain informed consent before any diagnostic or therapeutic procedures. Obtaining an informed consent enables patients to accept or reject their care or treatments and prevent future contentions among patients and medical staff. METHODS This survey was carried out during 2011-2. We assessed...

● Have the radiation dose produced by the CT imaging equipment verified annually by a medical physicist. To more firmly align its accreditation requirements with these legislative changes, The Joint Commission added elements of performance (EPs) to Environment of Care (EC) Standard EC.02.04.03 and Provision of Care, Treatment, and Services (PC) Standard PC.01.02.15 for the ambulatory care, crit...

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations was founded in 1951 as a private, not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits hospitals and other healthcare organizations. In 1987, the JCAHO launched its Agenda for Change to create a more modern and sophisticated accreditation process to place primary emphasis on actual performance. Coincident with this new emphas...

The revised requirements will be displayed on The Joint Commission website at http://www.jointcommission.org/ standards_information/prepublication_standards.aspx, posted in the fall E-dition®, and published in the 2016 Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Nursing Care Centers (CAMNCC). The box that begins below displays the revised requirements; new text is underlined, and deleted language is...

Microeconomic reforms were introduced from the mid-1980s to stem the slippage in growth in Australia’s productivity and living standards. Productivity growth more than doubled in the 1990s to reach a record high. A range of possible explanations for the productivity surge are examined in the paper. The three most plausible are microeconomic reforms; education and skills in the workforce; and th...

The risk of patients receiving opioids without adequate monitoring and resulting in adverse outcomes has been noted by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. More aggressive opioid analgesia often is clinically indicated, but it is not without risk. Adverse drug events due to opioids have increased with the recent adoption of pain management standards by the Joint Commission on Accreditat...

The Joint Commission recently approved the addition of two new Human Resources (HR) requirements for accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals, and ambulatory care organizations (including those that have achieved Advanced Diagnostic Imaging certification) that provide diagnostic imaging services. The new HR requirements address minimum qualifications for technologists providing computed ...