Profession
JCAHO wrong-site surgery prevention protocol implemented
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted July 12, 2004
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's universal protocol for preventing wrong-site surgeries went into effect July 1.
Now all JCAHO accredited hospitals must follow the protocol, which includes a preoperative verification process to ensure that the patient's and surgical team's expectations regarding the procedure and surgical site are the same, an unambiguous mark of the surgical site has been made, and a "time-out" is taken immediately prior to the start of the operation to make a final verification of the patient, surgical site and procedure.
JCAHO received more than 3,000 online survey responses in the process of developing the protocol.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/07/12/prbf0712.htm.