Joint Commission to help hospitals fix, not just identify, problems

The Joint Commission has announced that its newly-formed Center for Transforming Healthcare will work on new collaborative programs with leading hospitals and healthcare systems to find a cause of the most deadly breakdowns in patient care, and put a stop to them. Its first project is to take on poor compliance with hand-washing, widely regarded as the best defense against infections that kill nearly 100,000 patients annually. Next up: breakdowns in patient hand-offs from one hospital department or shift to another that often result in medical errors or oversights in care.