Reference no: EM133521891

Accreditation by a nationwide agency provides any healthcare facility many benefits, including but not limited to: improving risk management and risk reduction, helps organize and strengthen patient safety efforts, and enhances staff recruitment and development, among many others (The Joint Commission). Accrediting agencies provide a standard for which the facilities must maintain their operations, otherwise they lose their accreditation, and along with that, their reputation within the community, not just the healthcare community. Being accredited means the facility has met all requirements to that agency, and one of the requirements is to have a certain standard for risk management compliance, and handling issues a certain way.

At the end of August, of this year, The Joint Commission placed Chapel Hill, N.C. based UNC hospitals' accreditation on probation after discovering multiple issues (Kommers, 2019). These issues included "inadequate suicide screening documentation and assessment, lack of "ligature resistant hardware and furniture" in behavioral health areas and incomplete or inadequate documentation of physician medication orders, according to an internal UNC System document". Adequate screening of suicide could have implemented within the triage screening, adjusting the furniture and hardware adequately per suggestions could have prevented that citation, and ensuring an EMR or some other electronic record keeping of physician pharmaceutical orders could completely eradicate errors.