National Patient Safety Goals
The National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) are annual goals established by the Joint Commission (JC) and are designed to encourage hospitals to make improvements in the way they care for patients, to reduce preventable medical errors, and to improve patient safety.
The purpose of these goals is to promote specific improvements in patient safety. The NPSGs highlight problematic areas in healthcare, using both evidence and expert based data, which are updated annually. These goals are designed to require health care organizations to protect patients from the negative impact of specific health care errors.
The NPSGs focus on a variety of safety challenges that most hospitals face on a daily basis. Each year, health care providers must meet the requirements of the Joint Commission’s NPSGs as part of the accreditation process. Hospitals must do more than simply perform specified tasks to achieve compliance with these goals. To assure safe health care environments, hospitals must continually analyze fundamental workflow systems and redesign those systems as needed.
Because safe, high quality healthcare can only be provided in a system that has been designed to support such care, the NPSGs focus on system-wide solutions wherever possible. Institutions are surveyed by the JC for compliance with these goals. Each year health care providers must meet the requirements of the JC NPSGs as part of the accreditation process. HCA is committed to meeting these goals not only to meet compliance requirements for JC but also because it is the right thing to do for our patients.
To learn more about the National Patient Safety Goals, obtain a status report on how our facility is accomplishing these goals and how we compare to other Joint Commission accredited organizations nationwide and statewide, visit the Hospitals Joint Commission Accreditation Quality Report website.