Regulatory and accreditation agencies have participated in the nursing community for several years. Regulation in healthcare started as a registry process to protect patients and healthcare givers. Currently, regulation serves the purpose of protecting patients. It also helps in defining healthcare practices and nursing education. In order to understand the function of regulatory and accrediting agencies and practices one must understand their definitions (McWay, 2003).
A regulatory agency has the responsibility of creating and enforcing rules or regulations of the law. Accreditation is a voluntary and self-regulatory process that non-governmental associations recognize programs put in place to meet or extend standards of quality healthcare. Accreditation also helps in the improvements of institutions or programs related to the use of resources, application of processes and achievement of results (Lundy & Janes, 2009).
There are several regulatory and accreditation standards that exist in the case study. First, preventable measures have been used as a regulatory standard. For instance, professionals have increased malpractice lawsuits after falls. Patients and their families institute these lawsuits to suggest that better care would have prevented the fall and injuries. Malpractice suits serve as a preventive measure. They are used to prevent many patient falls from occurring. The jury awards for the perceived unnecessary complications. The methodological explanation of malpractice suits is that fall prevention is a nursing assessment issue (Miller, 2006).
Secondly, healthcare organizations have developed preventive measures used for the prevention of patient falls. For example, healthcare agencies now collect data and use th...
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... safety interventions. Therefore, no agency can successfully adopt potential improvements without cost-effectiveness. This calls for applying cost-effective changes before applying regulatory and accreditation standards.
In conclusion, this case study shows that regulatory and accreditation standards exist. There are strategies that help in meeting these standards. However, the strategies do not function adequately to ensure that the standards are met because of several gaps that exist in practice. Therefore, regulatory and accreditation agencies should work closely with hospitals and other healthcare agencies, to close those gaps and develop a cost effective and appropriate way of meeting regulatory and accreditation standards. This will help healthcare agencies to provide adequate safety and care, for patients (Folland, Goodman, & Stano, 2007).
State and federal regulations, national accreditation standards, and clinical practice standards are created, and updated regularly. In addition, to these regulations, OIG publishes a compliance work plan annually that focuses on protecting the integrity of the program, and prevention of fraud and abuse. The Office of the Inspector General examines quality‐of‐care issues in nursing facilities, organizations, community‐based settings and occurrences in which the programs may have been billed for medically unnecessary services. The Office of the Inspector General’s work plan for the fiscal year 2011 highlights five areas of investigation for acute care hospitals. Reliability of hospital-reported quality measure data, hospital readmissions, hospital admissions with conditions
The model discusses the impact of new regulations on education for APRN, Licensure Accreditation, Certification & Education Document, certification and practice. The model is implemented to grasp the general understanding and definition of advance practice registered nurse APRN role, inconsistencies with state by state recognition of APRN roles, and determining eligibility for APRN licensure (Consensus Model for APRN Regulation, 2015). The consensus model definition of APRN is a nurse who is educationally rounded to assume the responsibility of assessing, diagnosis, treating, teaching health promotion and disease maintenance, acquired advanced clinical knowledge and skills to provide direct patient care, has passed a national certification examination, and licensed to practice in one of the four roles (Consensus Model for APRN Regulation, 2015).
The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the Healthcare system. They do this by regulating and evaluating health care organizations, helping them improve and give a more effective and safe care (The Joint Commission, 2012). The National Patient safety goals are ways in which the joint commission strives to improve the way health care is provided (The Joint Commission, 2012). Effective on January 1, 2012, the Joint commission came up with new ways to improve the Care of Medicare Based Long term Care facilities and provided Safety regulations to be followed. In order to better understand the impact that this regulations have in the healthcare, it is necessary to identify and describe the purpose of each regulation, and emphasize on the impact that falls in particular, can have among the geriatric patients.
This document’s purpose is to assist nurses to identify elderly patients at risk for falls and to implement interventions to prevent or decrease the number of falls and fall related injuries (RNAO, 2005). The target population are elderly adults in acute or long-term care. The recommendations are to help practitioners and patients make effective healthcare decisions, support nurses by giving educational recommendations, and to guide organizations in providing an environment receptive to quality nursing care and ongoing evaluation of guideline implementation and outcomes. These guidelines stress and interdisciplinary approach with ongoing communication and take patient preferences into consideration.
The Joint Commission is the accrediting body for all health care organizations within the United States. All facilities within the United States must be accredited by the Joint Commission in order to become licensed to provide health care services. The objective of this paper is to inform the reader about the Joint Commission. This paper will discuss the history of the Joint Commission, how they accredit healthcare organizations, and the benefits of the accrediting body.
In collecting evidence for this project, the database Cinahl was used to extract articles from scholarly journals in the field of nursing. An initial general search was conducted using the combined terms “falls” and “scale” which yielded a handful of articles regarding fall assessment tool. A second search using the term “Morse fall” was conducted to broaden the scope of research, and we were able to make selections from these searches. The Science direct website also provided fast facts on the different falls assessment tools and interventions which were applied to this project. The phenomenon of falls has long been studied in order to develop policies and procedures to decrease the overall number of falls. Meta-analysis
In this essay the author will rationalize the relevance of professional, ethical and legal regulations in the practice of nursing. The author will discuss and analyze the chosen scenario and critically review the action taken in the expense of the patient and the care workers. In addition, the author will also evaluates the strength and limitations of the scenario in a broader issue with reasonable judgement supported by theories and principles of ethical and legal standards.
Medicare suppliers must be accredited by the Joint Commission (JC) or by a state regulated survey, which is performed by selected state agencies on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). As of July 2010 the CMS monitor and provide guidelines which the Joint Commission incorporates into its review processes. Accreditation consists of a in depth review of a hospital's physical plant, patient care , medical staffing and services based on quality factors and standards produced by CMS, as well as conditions of participation requirements under the Title 42, Part 482, of the United States Code.
The standards of the Joint Commission are a foundation for an objective evaluation process the may help healthcare organizations measure, assess and improve performance. These standards are focused on organizational functions that are key for providing safe high quality care services. The Joint Commission’s standards set goal expectations of reasonable, achievable and surveyable performance of an organization. Only new standards that are relative to patient safety or care quality, have positive impact on healthcare outcomes, and can be accurately measured are added. Input from healthcare professionals, providers, experts, consumers and government agencies develop these standards.
Falls are the second most common adverse event within health care institutions following medication errors, and an estimated 30% of hospital-based falls result in serious injury. The severity of this problem led the Joint Commission to make reducing the risk of patient injuries from falls a national patient safety goal for hospitals in 2009 (AHRQ, 2006). Falls are a leading cause of hospital-acquired injury and frequently prolong and complicate hospital stays and result in poor quality of life, increased costs, and unanticipated admissions to long-term care facilities.
It is the hope and the goal of many hospital staff to help to decrease the number of falls in the hospital setting. The hope is to establish a plan that will assist nursing staff to decrease the number of falls. Falls can be extremely harmful to the elderly. Preventing falls is a much need goal that will bring better outcomes for the patient and the hospital. Evaluation of the action plan will also be planned for so that revisions can be made as needed to decrease the amount of patient falls.
A fall is a lethal event that results from an amalgamation of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors which predispose an elderly person to the incident (Naqvi et al 2009). The frequency of hospital admission due to falls for older people in Australia, Canada, UK and Northern Ireland range from 1.6 to 3.0 per 10 000 population (WHO 2012). The prevalence of senior citizen’s falls in acute care settings varies widely and the danger of falling rises with escalating age or frailty. Falls of hospitalized older adults are one of the major patient safety issues in terms of morbidity, mortality, and decreased socialization (Swartzell et al. 2013). Because the multi-etiological factors contribute to the incidence and severity of falls in older society, each cause should be addressed or alleviated to prevent patient’s injuries during their hospital stay (Titler et al. 2011). Therefore, nursing interventions play a pivotal role in preventing patient injury related to hospital falls (Johnson et al. 2011). Unfortunately, the danger of falling rises with age and enormously affect one third of older people with ravages varying from minimal injury to incapacities, which may lead to premature death (Johnson et al. 2011). In addition, to the detrimental impacts on patient falls consequently affect the patient’s family members, care providers, and the health organization emotionally as well as financially (Ang et al. 2011). Even though falls in hospital affect young as well as older patients, the aged groups are more likely to get injured than the youth (Boltz et al. 2013). Devastating problems, which resulted from the falls, can c...
...ches indicate how nurses can ensure prevention and mitigation of the problems experienced due to falls. There are various strategies that can be used to enhance the safety of individuals from falls. In order to be able to deal with these issues within the healthcare facilities, nurses must be involved in the effective policy making so that the risks of patient falling can be amicably dealt with. On the other hand, the nurses must be placed at the forefront of the implementation process of the designed interventions. Leaders must engage the nurses in applying the evidence-based therapies so that they can ensure good safety for the patients. Nurses are important in ensuring advocacy, education and the management of the facility environment. The nurses will therefore apply various necessary interventions that guarantee safe environments for the patients and the nurses.
...n of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and the American Medical Accreditation Program (AMAP), just to name a couple. Each of the accrediting bodies is unique in terms of their mission, activities, compositions of their boards, and organizational histories, and each develops their own accreditation process and programs and sets their own accreditation standards. . "Accreditation of a health care facility or program is a symbol of quality, similar to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval that indicates to the public that the organization or program has met certain standards." (Goode, 2001) The accreditation proves that healthcare facility underwent the accreditation process and met all of the necessary requirements to become qualified. Accreditation has been generally viewed as a desirable process to establish standards and work toward achieving higher quality care.
Unit-specific satisfaction and fall data evaluated pre and post implementation of EBP nursing strategies. Beside the promptness of responses to the call bell, “hands off reports“ at the bedside now implemented new hourly rounds, which significantly decrease patient falls and improve satisfaction. “In the hospital setting, falls continue to be the number one adverse event with approximately 3-20% of inpatients falling at least once during their hospitalization. Of those, 30-51% of falls in hospitals result in some injury“ (Oliver, Healey, & Haines, 2010). This can cause serious injuries (fracture, subdural hematomas, bleeding), which can lead to death. For example falls in the elderly can lead to a downward, negative effect on emotional health, physical health, long term functioning, and quality of life. “All hospitals have to conduct fall risk assessments for hospitalized patients to identify patients’ risk for falls so that prevention measures can be implemented into the plan of care“ (The Joint Commission,