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  Patient Safety Initiative

View of Operating RoomIn 2004, the New Jersey Patient Safety Act (P.L. 2004, c9) was signed into law. The statute was designed to improve patient safety in hospitals and other health care facilities by establishing a medical error reporting system.

Rather than seeking to place blame, the system promotes comprehensive reporting of adverse patient events, systematic analysis of their causes, and creation of solutions that will improve health care quality and save lives.

This site is designed to help health care facilities develop strong patient safety programs and fulfill the law’s mandatory reporting requirements.

Information for Patients and/or Caregivers

This site is designed for health care facilites, not for patients.

If you would like to file a complaint about care that you or a family member received, click here.

More information on patient safety is available at 5 Steps to Safer Health Care developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

New and Noteworthy
Patient Safety Initiative Updates reviews Suicide in the Hospital Setting. The newsletter highlights suicidal behaviors and risk factors to help hospital staff better identify patients with suicidal ideation and reduce the number of suicide attempts. The newsletter also reviews event reports and hospital actions to prevent suicide and provides recommendations on identifying environmental risks.


Color Codes for Patient Risk Factors
Working in conjunction with the Department's Patient Safety Initiative, the New Jersey Hospital Association released a toolkit to standardize color-coded wristbands used across New Jersey health care facilities. There is currently no consistency across facilities in the use of color designations for clinical conditions. A task force composed of representatives from hospitals, long term care facilities ambulatory care settings, home health providers and emergency responders agreed on standardized colors and policies. The standard colors are:

allergy band Allergy
fall risk band Fall Risk
 Latex Allergy band Latex Allergy
Do Not Resuscitate band Do Not Resuscitate
Restricted Limb band Restricted Limb

The Standardizing Color Codes for Patient Risk Factors: Implementation Tool Kit includes training materials for staff, FAQ handouts for staff education, posters and other materials.

 


Department of Health and Senior Services

P. O. Box 360, Trenton, NJ 08625-0360
Phone: (609) 292-7837
Toll-free in NJ: 1-800-367-6543
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Last Modified: Monday, 30-Jun-08 08:29:09