The Joint Commission has revised its Medication Management (MM) standards for all applicable accreditation programs to assure that they continue to reflect evidence-based practices and quality and safety issues that have emerged from the field in recent years. During review, it was determined that new additions and revisions were needed in other chapters as well, including Environment of Care (EC) and Records of Care (RC). Revised and new standards and elements of performance include the following:
- Implementing a policy to provide emergency backup for essential medication dispensing equipment identified by the organization
- Implementing a policy to provide emergency backup for essential refrigeration for medications identified by the critical access hospital
- Managing hazardous medications in behavioral health care settings that engage in the medication management processes
- Adding “wasting” of medications to the required written policy addressing the control of medication between receipt by an individual health care provider and administration of the medication
- Implementing a policy that describes the types of medication overrides that will be reviewed for appropriateness and the frequency of the reviews when automatic dispensing cabinets (ADCs) are used
- Recording the date and time of any medication administered in the patient’s clinical record
Prepublication Standards
Prepublication Standards - Effective January 1, 2018