Since early 2020, the world has been inundated with news stories, studies and firsthand accounts of COVID-19 and its impact. With so much information swirling around, it can be tough at times to quantify and qualify just how devastating this virus has been — or how effective the vaccines have been in combatting the virus.
To help put the numbers into context, The Joint Commission’s Department of Research developed a presentation that visually shows the publicly available data. “Putting COVID Numbers and Vaccinations into Context” — and its accompanying video — show COVID-19 deaths relative to other events, including the influenza virus and traffic fatalities.
It also puts the COVID-19 vaccination rates into perspective by showing how many vaccinated vs. nonvaccinated individuals have died from COVID-19 or complications caused by the virus. The data proves that the COVID-19 vaccines are working, as the proportion of vaccinated people who die from COVID-19 ranges from 0.1 to 5% (depending upon the state).
The presentations also can be found on The Joint Commission’s COVID-19 Resources webpage under the “COVID-19 Vaccinations” section.
It is estimated that one in every 100 hospitalized patients will be affected by non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NVHAP).
A new issue of Quick Safety — “Issue 61: Preventing non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia” — focuses on a recent call to action from national organizations, including The Joint Commission, to address NVHAP. The call challenges health care systems to implement and support NVHAP prevention, and to add NVHAP prevention measures to education for patients, health care professionals and students.
Read Quick Safety.
Physician suicide is an issue in health care, with data showing relative risk for suicide being 2.27 times greater among women and 1.41 times higher among men as opposed to the general population.
To break down the barriers and stigma tied to this issue and to increase awareness, the Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine (CORD) and more than a dozen other organizations have designated Sept. 17 as National Physician Suicide Awareness Day.
The deadline to participate in the Institute for Safe Medication Practices’ safety self-assessment tool for perioperative settings to see how organizations’ systems and practices are faring in protecting patients from medication errors has been extended to Dec. 10.
The Medication Safety Self Assessment® for Perioperative Settings is for hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and other surgery sites. It aims to provide a way to document compliance with requirements for risk assessment, such as The Joint Commission’s Leadership (LD) standard LD.04.04.05, and performance improvement.
A Continuous Customer Engagement (CCE) webinar focused on rehospitalizations is scheduled for Sept. 29. The topic was identified by The Joint Commission’s performance measure dashboard as an area that accredited nursing care center organizations can improve.
The free webinar — which will take place from 9-10 a.m. PT / 10-11 a.m. MT / 11 a.m.-noon CT / noon to 1 p.m. ET — will feature presentations from Life Care Center of Morgan County and Avantara Aurora. Participants will learn how to:
- Apply concepts learned about evidence-based best practices regarding rehospitalization for short stay residents in nursing care organizations.
- Identify common performance and outcome challenges in rehospitalization for short stay residents in nursing care organizations.
- Prepare to implement at least one new best practice related to rehospitalization for short stay residents in nursing care organizations and improve outcomes in the learner’s facility.
The webinar also offers 1.0 Continuing Education (CE) credit for those who:
- Individually register for the webinar.
- Listen to the live webinar in its entirety. Only those listening live during the 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 webinar recording and slides will be available approximately two hours after the session concludes.
- Dateline @ TJC — Assessing Risk and Preventing Harm: By regularly assessing risk – which The Joint Commission requires you to do – your organization takes a giant and critical step toward preventing harm. And that is where “The Joint Commission Guide to Risk Assessment” comes in. This new book from Joint Commission Resources (JCR) highlights risk assessments that are required by The Joint Commission to help organizations identify critical risks and take steps to mitigate them, writes Mary Beth Curran, Executive Editor, Global Publications, JCR.
- Improvement Insights — Managing Interruptions and Distractions during Surgical Counts: Errors in surgical counting can lead to an unintentionally retained surgical item, which is considered an unacceptable error because of the serious negative impact it can have on patient health and safety. It is widely accepted that this type of error is preventable given organizational checks and balances. Yet, at hospitals around the world, there are instances of surgical items being retained, writes Katherine A. Bubric, MSc.
- Improvement Insights — Putting COVID-19 Numbers and Vaccinations into Context: It is my hope that, by putting COVID-19 data into a more relatable context, people may be able to better interpret the impact of COVID-19 and to reach their own, data-driven conclusions about the role that vaccines can have in reducing risks for themselves and their communities, writes Scott Williams, PsyD, Director, Department of Research.