No,
not really THE men in black. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones did not
come jumping out of the corners, with their flashy guns, ready to shoot
aliens. No, it wasn't the IRS, the dentist, clowns, or whatever scares
you silly. No, this pertained more to healthcare. What could it be?
The police of hospitals- JC- the Joint Commission (which used to go by JCAHO back in the day) made a surprise visit to the hospital last week.
The men in black=JCI have never had the experience of witnessing a JC visit. Sure, I've
heard about it. I've heard how they cite hospitals, how people hear
about those citations, etc etc...but have never actually experienced it.
Man, the tension that ran through the pharmacy the moment the email
went out with "JCAHO is here!"was incredibly high.
We did well with the visit. From my experience with other hospitals
where I have interned or had rotations at, my institution right now has
the highest standards out of all of them.Pharmacy answered their
questions well and they seemed pleased. Or at least I hope their
display was that of approval.
But that got me thinking. What's the most recent issue that the JC has recently addressed?
The Hand Off
Ten hospitals across the nation volunteered to address their
hand-off problem. The "hand off" refers to when patients are
transferred- either within the hospital (ER to floor), to other
hospitals, or from the community. Currently, the JC implemented a RPI-
or a Robust Process Improvement methodology, that, through data and
other processes, discovers, systematically, risk factors that may be
the cause of these errors. They believe the errors occur from "SHARE":
S: Standardization of content
H:Hardwire within your system (new technology)
A: ability to ask questions
R:Reinforcement of quality measures (aka quality assurance)
E:Education and coach (providing the best education to staff as possible).
I feel, as an inpatient pharmacist, there's only so much you can do,
trying to do medication reconciliation from the community and within
their transfers. The potential for errors are endless, when the new
physician himself just orders all the recent medications he finds on the
profile as well. But still, in the end, we are pharmacists, so we do
all that we can- that means, talking to the nurses, physicians, everyone
involved in the patient care- as well as knowing the technology and
keeping other health professionals accountable to preventing medication
errors from occuring between these hands off.
I wonder how hospitals score on this across the nation. Nonetheless,
the men in black are gone... it's only a certain amount of time until
we see how we do. Until then, we continue to uphold the standards of
the hospital and our profession to the best of our ability...