A new patient safety campaign from The Joint Commission — Speak Up™ About Vaccinations — is designed to educate patients on vaccinations and when and for what they may be needed.
Vaccines are life-saving tools that reduce the risk of serious illness or death due to infection from viruses or bacteria. Getting vaccinated is a personal health decision. Like all important decisions, patients should get the best information they can to make an informed choice.
This new Speak Up campaign includes:
- An infographic poster/flyer in three sizes (8.5x11, 11x17 and 24x36).
- An animated video to incorporate in healthcare facilities.
- A distribution guide with recommendations on how healthcare organizations can use and provide the materials for patients and their families, caregivers, and advocates.
The infographic and video are available in both English and Spanish.
Launched in 2002, the award-winning Speak Up™ program has been used in more than 70 countries. It encourages patients to be their own advocates and to:
- Speak up
- Pay attention
- Educate yourself
- Advocates (family members and friends) can help
- Know about your new medicine
- Use a quality health care organization
- Participate in all decisions about your care
For updates on new Speak Up™ campaigns as they become available, sign up for email alerts or subscribe to Joint Commission Online. (Contact: Caron Wong, cwong@jointcommission.org)
Joint Commission Chief Patient Safety Officer and Medical Director Haytham M. Kaafarani, MD, MPH, recently wrote an editorial for The Lancet commenting on a recent study that was published in the journal on how changing sterile gloves and instruments at the time of abdominal wound closure may prevent surgical site infections (SSIs).
While noting some of the limitations of the study, he also congratulated the authors for providing Level 1 data “that has immediate implications for the care of millions of patients worldwide, including patients in low-resource settings where the quality of life, and the economic and social burden of SSI remain high.”
“Change of gloves and instruments before skin closure in clean-contaminated and contaminated-dirty abdominal procedures prevents one of every eight SSIs, and the results are possibly if not probably generalisable globally and to non-abdominal surgery,” Dr. Kaafarani wrote.
Read Dr. Kaafarani’s editorial.
Two free Expert to Expert webinars on 2023 annual updates for electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) are scheduled for December.
The first — on Perinatal Care (PC) eCQMs PC-02, PC-05 and PC-07 — is scheduled for Dec. 6 and offers 1.5 Continuing Education (CE) credits. The 90-minute webinar begins at 1 p.m. CT and the learning objectives are to:
- Navigate the eCQI Resource Center website to locate measure specifications, value sets, measure flow diagrams and technical release notes.
- Apply concepts learned about the logic and intent for the PC-02, PC-05 and PC-07 eCQMs.
- Prepare to implement those eCQMs for the 2023 reporting period.
- Identify common issues and questions regarding those eCQMs.
The second webinar — on Emergency Department (ED) eCQM ED-2 — is scheduled for Dec. 13 and offers 1 CE credit. The one-hour webinar begins at 11 a.m. CT and the learning objectives are to:
- Navigate the eCQI Resource Center website to locate measure specifications, value sets, measure flow diagrams and technical release notes.
- Apply concepts learned about the logic and intent for the ED-2 eCQM.
- Prepare to implement the eCQM for the 2023 reporting period.
- Identify common issues and questions regarding the eCQM.
The Expert to Expert webinar series provides a deep-dive into measure intent, logic and other clinical/technical aspects of eCQMs to assist hospitals to improve data use for quality improvement. Common questions submitted to The Joint Commission regarding these measures will be addressed.
To earn CE credit, participants must:
- Individually register for the webinar.
- Attend the entire live broadcast. Only those attending the live session will be eligible to receive credit.
- Complete a post-program evaluation/attestation. The program evaluation/attestation link will be sent to your registered email after the webinar.
The recording, program slides and Q&A document will be available on The Joint Commission website within several weeks of the broadcast.
The Joint Commission invites physicians — especially pathologists, oncologists and psychiatrists — interested in improving quality and safety at the national level to join us for a virtual career fair on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 6 p.m. CT.
Surveyors can work full time, part time or intermittently depending on their availability. A Joint Commission physician surveyor will have approximately five years of recent clinical experience, including at least two years in management, but we welcome those with less experience who may be interested in The Joint Commission in the future.
NAHQ has released “Faces of Quality,” which shares the stories and careers of those who have achieved a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ) credential. The compilation aims to inspire those who may be interested in taking that next step in their own career path. Read the compilation.