The ultimate goal of the HCAC is to help health care facilities and providers to improve patient safety everyday. Preventable harm in the health care environment - that which is caused by the processes of health care rather than an underlying disease or external accident - is known as "iatrogenic harm". Tragically, this kind of harm to patients is all too common but preventable if proper measures are implemented. Eliminating such harm requires identifying practices that pose risk on a daily basis and providing tools to address and eliminate these risks. This is the premise of our National Quality and Safety Goals.
The HCAC National Quality and Safety Goals are targeted improvements intended to be a wide spread, easy to implement procedures and systems in hospitals regardless of their accreditation status or intent. These measures are meant to bring focus to patient safety priorities at all health care organizations and give national attention to finding better ways to protect patients. The goals focus on problematic areas in health care and specifically in hospitals — such as medication safety and preventing health-care-related infections — and are meant to help hospitals use systems and techniques to further improve safety during patient care experiences.
One of the responsibilities of the HCAC Board of Directors is to prepare and publicize these goals on annual basis. The HCAC provides guidance on how to effectively comply with each goal’s requirements. Health care facilities successfully meeting compliance with all the criteria for all goals are awarded certification.
The specific intent of the HCAC in annually stating and publicizing the NQSGs and supporting their uptake and implementation is:
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To develop a common language for patient safety in the community ; health care and public
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To identify the key patient safety issues in the health care , from both the patient and professional perspective
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To identify, promote and support the implementation patient safety and quality of care best practices and make them widely available to the health care community
The first set of HCAC National Quality and Safety Goals were stated in 2009 and implemented in hospitals that enrolled in the 2009 NQSG campaign. Seven hospitals were certified for meeting the 2009 HCAC National Quality and Safety Goals.
In 2010, the HCAC Board of Directors stated the second set of NQSG which are added to the goals of 2009. And in line with HCAC’s intent to foster improvement in health care quality and safety across the continuum, the 2010 goals apply to any health care facility.