Posts Tagged ‘standard’
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Here we sit, on the cusp of mandatory accreditation for ‘Advanced Imaging’ modalities at outpatient providers (these are CT, MRI and PET), and a series of articles on medical radiation exposure splashes across the New York Times.
In nearly concurrent moves, the Joint Commission (JC) unveils their just-developed Advanced Imaging (AI) accreditation program, the FDA is clamoring for new authority to regulate medical device safety (or gearing-up to use authority that it’s been hiding for safe-keeping, that isn’t exactly clear to me), the US Congress whips together a set of hearings on the issue, and, at those hearings, the American College of Radiology (ACR) recommends that the Feds expand the scope of the AI accreditation requirement to include radiation therapy and to apply the expanded accreditation requirements to hospitals, too.
Whew, that’s a lot of ground covered for radiology in just the last few weeks! Wait a minute… who is that sitting in the backseat? Who has been drug through all of the hullabaloo about radiation exposure and patient safety without once having been considered, individually? MRI, that’s who.
Click To Read About How MRI Should Be Considered…
Tags: accident, accreditation, ACR, advanced imaging, American College of Radiology, CMS, congress, CT, diagnostic, exposure, FDA, hearing, IAC, ICAMRL, imaging, injury, Intersocietal Commission, ioinizing, JC, Joint Commission, magnetic resonance, MRI, PET, radiation, radiology, regulation, reimbursement, requirement, safety, standard, state
Posted in Other MRI Safety | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
In stark contrast to the speed with which we expect to see medical technology advance, the more bureaucratic process of regulatory or accreditation tends to be more deliberative and… oh heck, I’ll just say it… glacial in its pace to keep up. Every once in a while, however, these efforts ‘sling-shot’ forward.
Much to my surprise (and delight), this is happening with the new Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities (or Guidelines, for short). Though the 2010 edition of Guidelines has only been published for about a month (and the publisher has been struggling to catch up on back-ordered copies), two states have already adopted the 2010 edition as their requirements for licensure.
Click To Learn If Your State Is Among The First…
Tags: architect, code, design, engineer, equipment, facility, Georgia, guideline, Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities, hospital, imaging, license, magnetic resonance, MRI, New Jersey, planner, radiology, regulation, requirement, safety, standard, state, vendor
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
A few weeks ago the announcements came down, CMS had ‘deemed’ three organizations to accredit the new classification of Advanced Imaging in order to be eligible for Medicare & Medicaid reimbursement: the American College of Radiology (ACR), the Intersocietal Commission, and the Joint Commission (TJC).
The other two have had modality-specific accreditation programs for years, so what was the TJC going to do? Well, they’ve released their accreditation criteria, and one of the most wonderful surprises is that MRI safety is more prominent than it is in either of the other two ‘imaging’ accrediting bodies!
Click To Learn What’s In The New JCAHO Standard…
Tags: accreditation, ACR, American College of Radiology, detection, detector, ferromagnetic, ICAMRL, imaging, Intersocietal Commission, JCAHO, Joint Commission, magnetic resonance, metal, MRI, radiology, recommendation, requirement, standard, survey, surveyor, TJC
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Go grab yourself a cup of coffee before you continue… this is going to be a long (for me, anyway) rant.
Ready? OK…
Let’s start at the very beginning (“what a very good place to start”). Click To Read The Whole Story…
Tags: accident, accreditation, ACR, American College of Radiology, ASHE, best practice, colombini, death, detector, ECRI, FDA, ferromagnetic, GE, guidelines, Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities, healthcare, imaging, injury, JCAHO, Joint Commission, law, lawsuit, legal, license, magnetic, magnetic resonance, Marzendorfer, Mednovus, metal, Michael, MRI, MRI Design Guide, radiology, regulation, require, safety, Siemens, standard, TJC, VA
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety, Other MRI Safety | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
“Tweet, tweet” is usually all I hear from little birdies… but one little bird that flew past my office recently had a surprisingly large vocabulary and told me of new requirements that will be introduced in the forthcoming 2010 update to the ‘Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities’ (commonly referred to as ‘Guidelines’).
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Guidelines, they are the design requirements that are cited by the Joint Commission and, at last count, 42 of the 50 U.S. State Departments of Health. Technically, they aren’t a building code, but the function in almost the exact same way. For the first time, the Guidelines are going to have specific MRI suite design requirements for patient safety.
2010 Guidelines
Click Here To Read About The Specific MRI Safety Design Requirements…
Tags: accreditation, ACR, architecture, building code, design, detection, detector, Environment of Care, ferromagnetic, guidelines, hazard, imaging, JCAHO, Joint Commission, metal, MR, MRI, radiology, regulation, resonance, risk, safety, standard, standard of care, suite
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety, Other MRI Safety | No Comments »
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
One of the most oft-cited rationalizations for not complying with contemporary best practices that call for using ferromagnetic detection (FMD) for MRI pre-screening is that ‘FMD doesn’t catch anything that existing screening protocols aren’t meant to catch.’ What you may find surprising about this statement is that I agree with it wholeheartedly… I would just change the inflection a bit. I would say it more like…
Ferromagnetic detection doesn’t catch anything that existing screening protocols aren’t meant to catch.
That inflection makes a world of difference, as you’ll see in just a moment…
Click These Words Here To See What I Mean…
Office Chair Sucked Into MRI:
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Tags: accident, care, detection, detector, fatality, ferromagnetic, hazard, injury, magnet, magnetic resonance, metal, missile, MR, MRI, patient, photo, picture, projectile, risk, safety, screening, standard, Technologist, translational, video
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Break out the can of alphabet soup, because here we go, off into the far reaches of acronym land…
That’s right, the Joint Commission is offering a teleconference / webinar on the 2009 changes to the Environment of Care (EC) standard and what they mean to accredited MRI providers. Never heard of the EC standards before? Well, you’re not alone, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to you. In just a couple weeks, however, you can get the low-down on the new requirements.
Click to get the specifics on JCAHO’s new stand on MRI safety…
Tags: audio, conference, EC, Environment of Care, JCAHO, Joint Commission, MRI, regulation, requirement, Resources, safety, seminar, standard, TJC, web, webinar
Posted in Other MRI Safety | 3 Comments »
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
As you may be aware, the Joint Commission has historically offered nothing in the way of MRI-specific safety standards. MRI may be the only service at an accredited provider that had not even one specific JCAHO standard for patient safety. Yes, all of the broader patient safety standards apply to MRI as they do to the rest of the provider, but with so many unique risks, wouldn’t you think that they would have at least one MRI-specific safety standard?
Click to read more about Joint Commission, MRI safety, and the Environment of Care…
Tags: accident, accredit, accreditation, EC, Environment of Care, JCAHO, Joint Commission, MR, MRI, patient, safety, SEA, Sentinel Event Alert, standard
Posted in Ferromagnetic Detection for MRI Safety, Other MRI Safety | No Comments »