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Joint Commission Establishes
New Standards on Patient Pain ACEP.org (The American College of Emergency Physicians) Pain Management Standards Now In Effect " In an effort to make pain management a priority for health care facilities, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) implemented standards on patient pain management January 1. The standards were developed by JCAHO and the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They are expected to have a dramatic, positive impact on the estimated more than 120 million Americans who suffer from pain, according to the Joint Commission." Read more about it at http://acep.org/library/index.cfm/id/2471.htm (2/25/01) ACEP has added an excellent CME activity to the web site. The program, "Pain in Pieces" is presented by Donald Yealy, MD, and Thomas Terndrup, MD, and consists of two twenty-minute modules on current trends in pain and inflammation control. Each module is accredited for one hour of ACEP Category 1 CME. Blank Children's Hospital
Central Iowa Health Systems The American Journal of Emergency Medicine Patient Expectations for Pain Medication Delivery (abstract) The purpose of this study was to evaluate emergency department (ED) patient expectations for the delivery of pain medication and correlation of satisfaction with meeting patient needs for pain relief. In this prospective survey of 458 ED patients with pain, the patients reported a mean of 23 minutes as a reasonable wait for pain medication versus 78 minutes for the actual delivery of pain medication. Forty-five percent of patients received pain medication and 70% had their needs for pain relief met. Mean satisfaction for patients who had their needs for pain relief met was 83 mm versus 51 mm for patients whose needs for pain relief were not met (P < .001). Patients expect rapid delivery of pain medication after arrival in the ED. Time to delivery of pain medication in this ED does not meet patient expectations. Patients who had their needs for pain relief met were more satisfied with ED care.
American Society of Anesthesiologists JCAHO 's Pain Initiative - New Opportunities/New Risks In August 1999, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) published its Pain Assessment and Management Standards. This year, JCAHO surveyors are assessing compliance of the pain management standards through interviews with families and clinical staff and a facility s review of policies, procedures and examination of a hospital or ambulatory facility s pain management practice. In 2001, all accredited health care organizations will be required to comply with the standards. Read more: http://www.asahq.org/NEWSLETTERS/2000/11_00/gilbert.htm SpringNet: Nursing Communities Meeting JCAHO Standards for Pain Control Assessing and managing pain has long been a core nursing responsibility. Now, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is requiring accredited facilities and organizations to develop policies and procedures that formalize this obligation. Your practice must be in line with the new standards if you're employed by any accredited organization, including a hospital, long-term-care facility, home health care agency, outpatient clinic, or managed-care organization. Read more: http://www.springnet.com/content/nursing/0003/n3pain.htm
New England Clinicans Forum Help with the new JACHO Pain Management Standards. "Beginning on January 1, 2001, JCAHO surveyors will score organizations on new pain management standards that were introduced in 2000. The standards will be scored in organizations providing ambulatory care, behavioral health care, home care, hospice, hospital, and long term care. Both the Standard and its Intent are scored during a JCAHO survey." Read more about it at: http://www.neclinicians.org/pdf/Pain%20Management.pdf(Adobe Acrobat Reader required) WebMD.com A New Vital Sign: Patient-Rated Pain "Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and temperature -- the four vital signs. Now there's another aspiring to be the fifth: pain. It is one of the most common reasons why patients seek medical care, yet existing research shows pain is undertreated in this country. The reasons vary. There are, for example, negative connotations associated with the narcotic drugs used to treat pain: Both patients and doctors mistakenly may fear that prescribing opiates to control pain will result in addiction." Read more about it: CNN.com Hospitals told to treat patients' pain ...."starting next week, the nation's hospitals must make a major change: New standards require that every patient's pain be measured regularly from the time they check in -- just like other vital signs are measured -- and proper pain relief begun or the hospitals risk losing their accreditation. Patients should expect at least to be asked to rate how they're feeling, from zero, no pain, to 10, the worst pain imaginable. (Small children will use pictures to rate pain.) The score determines what steps the hospital must take to help." Read more about it: Christine Miaskowski chats about pain management "The medical community is turning greater attention to alleviating pain. Christine Miaskowski is president-elect of the American Pain Society. Currently professor and chair of the department of physiological nursing, University of California-San Francisco, she has been involved with the APS and the journal Pain Forum in various capacities throughout the 1990s." Read more about it:
Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation (JCAHO) Patient Rights and Organization Ethics chapter Standard RI.1.2 Patients are involved in all aspects of their care. " A hospital includes a commitment to pain management in its mission statement, patient and family bill of rights, or service standards (for example, "Patients have the right to expect quick response to reports of pain"). " Read more about it: American Pain Society New JCAHO Pain Standards "New Standards that integrate pain assessment and management into the JCAHO accreditation standards have been approved. The commissioners of JCAHO gave final approval to the new standards on July 31, and they will appear in all of the 2000-2001 accreditation manuals in September." Read more about it: Acute Pain Management Evidence-based Guideline Summary, from National Guideline Clearinghouse Expert Opinion in Pharmacotherapy Moving towards rational pharmacological management of pain with an improved classification system of pain Due to the growing variety of treatment approaches, classification of pain syndromes is often the best first step towards understanding a patient's pathophysiological process, initiating appropriate treatment and improving patient outcomes. Postgraduate Medicine Prioritizing pain management in patient care For more than a quarter century, medical literature has documented an epidemic of undertreated pain in the United States. The barriers to effective pain management are well known, but the collective will to remove them has been noticeably lacking. Recent developments suggest that the US healthcare system may be on the verge of moving from mere rhetoric to genuine reform. Yahoo / Reuters Elderly ER Patients Less Likely to Get Pain Relief "Elderly visitors to the emergency department are significantly less likely than younger patients to receive pain medication for fractures, researchers report. Looking back over data collected as part of a national survey, researchers based at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn found that, in the emergency department, patients who were at least 65 years old were 62% less likely than younger adults to receive pain medication following a fracture of the arm or leg." Stephen Frew's Medlaw.com JCAHO, Pain Scale, and Drug Seeking Conduct: As you know, Joint Commission requires that all patients have a right to pain control. Vital signs must address all of the elements of the pain scale, and EMTALA expects that medical records at least at the time of discharge vitals demonstrate improvement in pain levels. Undiagnosed acute pain is an emergency medical condition under EMTALA. American Academy of Family Practice A Tool for Safely Treating Chronic Pain : Two competing high-pressure systems have converged over medical care. A gale of headlines bewails the rampant diversion of prescription drugs onto America's streets. Meanwhile, a tempest of advocates, reviewers, defenders and regulators bemoans the under-treatment of chronic pain conditions in our communities. From the eye of the storm, physicians may find it difficult to balance these boisterous fronts and accomplish our goal of maximizing patients' social and physical functions via safe pain relief. AMA, JCAHO AND NCQA To Focus on Measuring Effectiveness of Appropriate Pain Management Three of the nation's leading professional organizations in the health care field are teaming up to develop a common set of evidence-based measures for evaluating the appropriateness and effectiveness of pain management for patients suffering from cancer, back pain and arthritis European Journal of Pain The truth about pain management: the difference between a pain patient and an addicted patient. Pain is undertreated in all parts of the world. Multiple barriers exist that prevent valid treatment of the pain patient. This paper will provide definitions of pain, addiction, physical dependence, tolerance, and pseudoaddiction that health professionals need to understand in order to treat pain. It will address how to differentiate between a pain patient and an addict when evaluating the patient for treatment. The physiological benefits of using long- versus short-acting opioids will be presented. With proper education of the medical community, patients should receive humane and compassionate treatment of their chronic pain syndromes. Yahoo / Reuters ER Patients Want, but Don't Get, Fast Pain Relief "Patients in the emergency department expect fast delivery of pain medication, but the existing system means they often must wait an hour or longer for pain relief, researchers report. Dr. David E. Fosnocht and colleagues surveyed 458 emergency department patients about their expectations on pain medication delivery. While the patients said they thought, on average, that 23 minutes was a reasonable amount of time to wait for pain relief, their average wait was actually 78 minutes, according to a report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine." |
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