Joint Commission Mandates Armband to Identify Patients With Too Many Armbands.

Oakbrook Terrace, IL --  Hospitals are up in arms again after The Joint Commission (TJC) on Monday started requiring all patients with too many armbands  to be flagged with an armband for having too many armbands. Mark Chassin, President and Chief Executive Officer of TJC, applauded his organization for taking  action against his organization's failed policies."I'm proud The Joint Commission is finally  taking a stand against The Joint Commission for continuing to ignore all the unintended consequences of their regulations," said Dr. Chassin.Doctors and nurses have been telling authorities for years that too many patient armbands are a safety hazard, but those complaints had fallen on deaf ears until last week when 87 year old ICU patient Pat Swanson of Denver, Colorado  underwent emergent bilateral upper extremity amputations at Great Scotts Medical Center shortly after 52 armbands cut off circulation during an anasarca storm."After a root cause analysis, we  determined the PROBABLY A PALLIATIVE CARE CANDIDATE  armband placed an hour before the event finally took her arms over the edge," said Dr. Steven Johnson, the Hospitalist on duty when this tragic but totally foreseeable event occurred."When she was admitted 24 days ago, she only had three arm bands, but if you do the math, she gained just over 2 armbands per day in the ICU that nobody noticed. In retrospect, the patient telling us 'My arms are too heavy with armbands to...
Source: The Happy Hospitalist - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Source Type: blogs