• EC Tracer Scenario: Environmental factors in preventing patient falls EC News, September 2016, Vol 19, #9, Pg 8 – There should be no disagreement that every hospital needs to be moving along the road to improved quality of care and greater patient safety. However, sometimes we get lost in the jargon and rhetoric of High Reliability, Zero Harm, Safety Culture, etc. Our September Article-of-the-Month (AOM) focuses on a practical, seemingly perrennial concern of patient falls. Patient injuries related to falls are a preventable form of harm that deserve our attention and committment to improve. A number of facilities have relatively recent initiatives to do just that. We encourage you to read this article, utilize the tracer and share your improvement initiatives in this area… particularly if you have taken advantage of the Fals TST.
  
• Click here for our REVIEW(Mbr/Guest); the FULL TJC ARTICLE(Mbr); to share a COMMENT(Mbr/Guest).

**RECOMMENDED READING:

1. PR: Top Standards Compliance …First Half of 2016 (PDF)[REF:EC, IC, LDR, SC]
2. PR: Notifying TJC About Organization Changes (PDF)[REF:GB, LDR, 2016]
   
3. TS: Achieving Zero Harm: Q&A with Ronald Wyatt, MD (PDF)[REF:LDR, MD]
4. EC: Understanding EC Standards Update for 2017 (PDF)[REF: EC, SC]
5. EC: Checklist for compliance with Standard EC.02.03.01 (PDF)[REF: EC, Tool]
6. EC: Environmental factors in preventing patient falls (PDF)[REF: EC, RN, Tracer]

**USEFUL UPDATES, LINKS & DOWNLOADS:

• TJC: Sentinel Event data reveals patient falls with injuries among 3 most frequently reported sentinel events in the first half of this year.
  
• JCAHO-Watch: The 2016 Hospital Standards Count is 310 (EP count is 1912)
• TJC: Targeted Solutions Tool (TST) for Falls
  
• Latest TJC Blogs: Physician Leader Monthly – Leadership Blog
  

**SupporTips