JCAHO safety center offers new web site

HealthCare Benchmarks and Quality Improvement, June, 2005

The recently opened Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) International Center for Patient Safety has launched a new web site, www.jcipatient safety.org, designed to serve as a major, central repository of resources and information related to all aspects of patient safety.

Its content will be relevant for patients, employers, physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, as well as for all types of health care organizations worldwide.

Ultimately, the site will provide an array of practical safety solutions that can be used to improve the safety and quality of patient care in a variety of health care environments, including, but not limited to, hospitals, outpatient clinics, physician offices, nursing homes, home care settings, behavioral health centers, and assisted-living facilities.

Health care organizations and health professionals will be able to use the center's web site, for example, to find information on the most frequent types of reported sentinel events and their root causes; resources for understanding and meeting the National Patient Safety Goals; and Sentinel Event Alert newsletter recommendations.

The site also will become a focus of the center's efforts to create a worldwide collaborative network of patient safety leadership organizations.

On-line discussion groups will provide an interactive forum for international dialogue on critical patient safety issues and topics.

The new web site is one of the first priority projects for the recently announced International Center for Patient Safety.

Jointly sponsored by JCAHO and Joint Commission Resources, the center advocates for safety in health care through prompting the adoption of solutions that are based on sound scientific research, expert professional consensus opinion, and principles of multidisciplinary education.