Health Policy Letter

Health Policy Letter HCS/545   Health Policy Letter Name xyz NY, 11418 dd mm, yyyy Name xyz Address New York City, Xyz Street NY 11416. Dear Mr. Ulrich, My name is Denise Amalfitano and I am a stakeholder at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. We are a non-profit organization within District 32. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center has been serving South Jamaica since 1891. “Jamaica Hospital is founded as a hospital dedicated to primarily serving accident victims. The bulk of the patients received in the early years of operation are severe surgical trauma cases” (jamaicahospital.org, para 1, 2016). In this time we have been serving the community we have done so with the highest of standards. We would like to encourage this standard for all within health care. We would like to encourage the patient safety initiative of doing away with Wrong Site Surgery. Wrong site surgery is when “surgery performed on the wrong site or patient or performing the wrong procedure. Since January 1995, 197 wrong site surgeries have been reported through the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization s sentinel event reporting system. Incidents of wrong site surgery should not happen” (Scheidt, 2002). This type of error is not only detrimental to the patient but to the organization as well. We at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center are willing to work with legislation in an effort to ensure that all organizations are willing to ensure patient safety regarding these issues. The reason we are so vested in this patient safety issue is due all potentially surgical site errors are preventable. It is understandable that all surgical procedures can have complications, which at times are unavoidable regardless of how experienced the doctor is. Wrong-site surgery is an uncommon event but does happen more that we care to know about. “The Joint Commission has collected data on reported sentinel events since 1995 with wrong-site surgery consistently ranked as the most frequently cited reason. In 2008, the year for which most recent data are available, there were 116 wrong-site surgery sentinel events reviewed” (Physicians, 2010). These errors should be preventable. This action is needed for patient safety. When wrong site surgery occurs it show the parties involved were careless in the patient’s care. Wrong site surgery occurs when individuals are careless, incompetence or a breakdown in the system. This happens when there are inconsistences in the pati...

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