Targeted Solutions Tool for wrong site surgery debuts

Marketwire

OAKBROOK TERRACE — A new weapon in the fight to reduce the incidence of wrong site surgery becomes available today.

The Targeted Solutions Tool, developed by the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, guides health care organizations through a step-by-step process to identify, measure and reduce risks in key processes that can contribute to a wrong site surgery.

Although reporting is not mandatory in most states, some estimates put the national incidence rate, which includes wrong patient, wrong procedure, wrong site, and wrong side surgeries, as high as 40 per week.

“Wrong site surgery is a rare event for individual surgeons or health care organizations. But when it does happen it is a devastating event that is often life altering for the patient who experiences it. We know wrong site surgery should never happen, but the problem persists,” says Dr. Mark R. Chassin, M.D., FACP, M.P.P., M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission. “Reducing the risk of wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong patient surgery is critical to patient safety and the reputation of any health care organization that performs invasive procedures. The Targeted Solutions Tool offers organizations a straightforward approach to identifying and eliminating risks of wrong site surgery in all phases of the process of surgery, from scheduling to the operating room.”

The TST helps organizations evaluate risks across their surgical system, including scheduling, preoperative and operating room areas. Because wrong site surgery incidents are rare, the TST helps an organization monitor its surgical cases for weaknesses that might result in a wrong site surgery.