The National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) are one of the major methods by which The Joint Commission establishes standards for ensuring patient safety in all health care settings. In order to ensure health care facilities focus on preventing major sources of patient harm, The Joint Commission regularly revises the NPSGs based on their impact, cost, and effectiveness. Major focus areas include promoting surgical safety, achieving health equity, and preventing hospital-acquired infections, medication errors, inpatient suicide, and specific clinical harms such as falls and pressure ulcers. The 2024 goals are now available.

Error disclosure is difficult yet important for patient and clinician psychological healing. This statement provides guidance to address barriers to emergency physician disclosure of errors that took place in the emergency room. Recommendations for improvement include the development of organizational policies that support error reporting, disclosure procedures, and disclosure communication training.

Nursing is foundational to safe patient care. This statement outlines recommendations for the nursing community to support the World Health Organization Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030. Tactics described target, governmental, organizational, and individual actions for improvement.

Inadvertent overprescribing and polypharmacy in the 65-year old or older patient population is a contributor to patient harm. The Beers criteria serve as standard guidance for clinicians to prevent the potential for Inappropriate medication prescribing. This guideline updates existing recommendations and simplified the listing by removing rarely used medications in the geriatric population.

Nurse staffing and patient care outcomes are linked, yet variation exists in nursing coverage throughout the United States. This submitted bill aims to legislate a national minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratio as a strategy to enhance safety and quality improvement.

Patients face risks when undergoing surgery. This revised guidance provides recommendations developed by multidisciplinary consensus and outlines how organizations can implement the standards to improve safety of invasive procedures. The report is centered on areas of effort targeting both organizational and process-level actions. 

Racial and ethnic inequalities are emerging as a primary contributor to harmful maternal care. This guidance examines obstacles to safe care for mothers of color and shares recommendations to reduce disparities such as team-based care and implicit bias training.

Medication errors associated with surgery and other invasive procedures can result in patient harm. This 10-element guidance suggests effective practices to address identified weaknesses in perioperative and procedural medication processes. Recommendations provided cover topics such as drug labeling, communication, and risk management.

Organ transplantation processes require reliable communication and technical expertise to ensure safety for organ delivery and patient care. This hearing discussed the findings of a United States Senate investigation into waste and harm in the US organ transplant system. Blood-type mistakes, transport failures, and process challenges were amongst the problems discussed.