The AAMI Foundation has synthesized the knowledge, experience, and advice of leading practitioners into a toolkit designed to help health care organizations meet The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal on clinical alarms.
Starting Jan.1, The Joint Commission will expect hospitals to establish and implement policies and procedures for managing clinical alarms, as this is when surveyors will start documenting noncompliance to the second phase of the goal.
To assist in developing the necessary policies and procedures, the AAMI Foundation’s complimentary Clinical Alarm Management Compendium provides specific tips and outlines practices already being used by leading institutions. Among them are the following ideas for safe alarm management:
- Issuing a call to action, championed by executive leadership, which recognizes the challenges, risks, and opportunities of alarm management, and committing to solving them.
- Bringing together a multidisciplinary team to spearhead action and build consensus.
- Gathering data and intelligence to identify challenges and opportunities.
- Prioritizing the patient safety vulnerabilities and risks to target with alarm management improvements.
In addition to outlining ways to implement these ideas, the compendium provides a set of default alarm parameters that could be used to benchmark alarm system settings. These parameters were developed from information reported in a survey conducted by the AAMI Foundation, and they represent responses from 17 of the 25 hospitals and health care system members of the National Coalition for Alarm Management Safety.
For additional information, visit the AAMI website.
