Professional Nursing Services, nurse practitioners, Pennsylvania Nurse Staffing agency

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JCAHO Certified Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner

Patient Quality or Safety Issues

The staffing firm informs its internal employees and independent contractors that it will take no disciplinary or punitive action because an internal employee or independent contractor reports safety or quality of care concerns to The Joint Commission.

To report such concerns, contact the Joint Commission

1-800-994-6610 or http://www.jointcommission.org

Date: July 10, 2008

Skilled Nursing, Inc. Staffing and Search. ® Earns Joint Commission Re-Certification

Horsham, PA, July 10, 2008:Skilled Nursing, Inc. Staffing and Search (SNI) announces that it has earned the Gold Seal of Approval™ for Health Care Staffing Services from The Joint Commission.

SNI Staffing and Search supplies RN and NP staffing, search and consulting solutions to hospitals, healthcare facilities, employers, the pharmaceutical industry, software vendors and integrators.

Since it’s founding in 1980, SNI focused on providing independent options for nurses while taking a leadership role in quality and compliance with nationally established standards and professionalism in the industry. SNI established one of the earliest programs to measure medication safety in 1980 and began specialty testing prior to placement. The practice of leading in standards and individual accountability for practice continues today with a client and nurse report card in pilot.

SNI underwent its first survey in 2005, as one of the first 8 in the country to pursue this level of distinction. After receiving its first certification, SNI went on to participate in the first Joint Commission pilot to establish standards of performance for the staffing industry. Marty Minniti, founder and CEO, continues the practice of SNI in a nursing leadership and an early adaptor mode with active participation and board membership in one of the nation's top regional collaborative to improve patient safety (the Health Care Improvement Foundation and Partnership for Patient Care). This opportunity to participate with regional leaders allows SNI to adopt and align in principle and practice on a daily basis.

Ms. Minniti states, “We believe that healthcare institutions will require Joint Commission Certification and the Gold Seal as evidence of high quality standards and select to partner with those staffing services who have achieved such certification. Certification recognizes SNI's dedication to supply healthcare professionals that are qualified to provide safe, up to date high-quality care and service to patients, employees and managers. We are honored to receive the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval and to participate in partnership with regional hospital specific initiatives furthering our client’s ability to meet their own JC and Magnet accreditations.

The Joint Commission certification program offers an independent, comprehensive evaluation of a staffing agency’s ability to provide quality-staffing services. According to Michele Sacco, the Executive Director of Business Development for the Joint Commission, “The Health Care Staffing Services Certification provides a comprehensive evaluation of key functional areas such as processes for verifying the credentials and competence of health care staff. Standards also address topics such as leadership, managing human resources, performance measurement and improvement, and information management. These critical issues are important to both staffing firms and the health care organizations that rely upon those firms. Now, health care organizations have a third-party source of information to assist them in making choices among staffing firms and supports efforts to improve the quality of care delivered to their patients.”

Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including more than 7,800 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 7,300 other health care organizations that provide long term care, assisted living, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. The Joint Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery networks, and other managed care entities. In addition, the Joint Commission provides certification of disease-specific care programs and primary stroke centers. An independent, not-for-profit organization, the Joint Commission is the nations’ oldest and largest standards setting and accrediting body in health care.

Date: April 17, 2006

Skilled Nursing, Inc. ® Earns Joint Commission Re-Certification

Horsham, PA, April 17, 2006: Skilled Nursing, Inc.® has again earned the Gold Seal of Approval™ for Health Care Staffing Services. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has awarded Skilled Nursing, Inc.® the Health Care Staffing Services Certification for two additional years.

Skilled Nursing, Inc.® met the Joint Commission’s national standards addressing how staffing firms determine the qualifications and competency of their staff, how they place their staff and then monitor staff's performance.

"Health care organizations that contract with Skilled Nursing, Inc.® can look to this certification as an assurance that Skilled Nursing, Inc.® demonstrates a commitment to providing and continuously improving quality services," says Michele Sacco, Executive Director, Health Care Staffing Services Certification, Joint Commission.

The ongoing shortages of nurses and other health care professionals have forced health care organizations to increasingly fill positions with temporary workers through contractual arrangements with staffing firms. The Joint Commission certification program was launched in October 2004 to offer an independent, comprehensive evaluation of a staffing firm's abilities to provide competent staffing services.

"Certification represents Skilled Nursing's dedication to providing nurses and nurse practitioners that are qualified to provide safe, high-quality care to patients," says Marty Minniti, CEO. "We're proud to be awarded the Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval. Earning this distinction is good for our nurses, the Nursing Agency industry, and us. I encourage all Nursing Agencies to become JCAHO certified.”

Marty Minniti went on to say, “We will continue to seek meaningful opportunities which measure our ability to provide competent nursing to our clients. I also want our client facilities to experience SNI’s ability to satisfy the new JCAHO “unannounced” Hospital Accreditation requirements. I want our clients to be confident that whenever it is their turn to undergo the accreditation process, SNI will do its part, to help them shine.

“I am very grateful that my agency is celebrating its 26^th anniversary this year. I sincerely believe that our success is due largely to the high caliber of nurses and professional staff who have associated themselves with SNI over the years and the great rapport we have established with our clients,” said Minniti.

Contact: Terry Aisenstein, RN, Communications Coordinator
Phone: 267-532-1620

Date: May 23, 2005

Skilled Nursing, Inc. ® Awarded Joint Commission Certification

Horsham, PA, May 5, 2005: Skilled Nursing, Inc. ®(SNI) a privately and locally owned Pennsylvania Nurse Staffing agency, has achieved the Gold Seal of Approval ^TMfor health care staffing services. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has awarded SNI Health Care Staffing Services Certification for one year.

SNI met national standards addressing how staffing firms determine the qualifications and competency of their professional nursing staff, how they place the nurses and then monitor the nurses' performance.

"Health care organizations that contract with Skilled Nursing, Inc. ® can look to this certification as an assurance that SNI demonstrates a commitment to providing and continuously improving quality services," says Michele Sacco, executive director, Health Care Staffing Services Certification, Joint Commission.

Martha Jean Minniti, R.N. B.S., CEO and Founder of SNI is delighted to receive this most recent professional acknowledgement during SNI's 25^th anniversary year.

When interviewed, Ms. Minniti cited the growing competition between the hospitals to be the best at what they do. "It is essential for each of them to achieve accreditation. It is their seal of good standing". Beginning in 2006, JCAHO surveyors are taking a new approach by conducting "unannounced" hospital surveys spending the majority of time on the patient floors evaluating the direct care a patient receives, in contrast to the old announced survey format. This new approach creates a large set of unpredictable dynamics for the surveyed facility. "We want our hospital clients to rest assured that professionalism, competency and patient safety are the same predictable fixed standards of high quality nursing they have grown accustomed to experiencing whenever using SNI Nurses" said Minniti.

Marty Minniti went on to say, "I volunteered to have my agency surveyed because I wanted our client facilities to have the confidence that our temporary nurse workforce will be educated and prepared to meet the new JCAHO "unannounced" format their hospitals will experience; and that the SNI nurses can be relied upon to do their part to help the facility shine when undergoing Accreditation. My agency is celebrating its silver jubilee this year and I am proud to state that this benchmark was possible because of the caliber of nurses who associate themselves with SNI. It was only natural for us to be one of the first to earn Accreditation. Our entire company is delighted to be one of the first 20 Nurse Staffing agencies in the country to be surveyed and accredited by JCAHO. It was a very challenging process but I personally believe that every agency should be accredited to show their commitment to the hospitals that use temporary nurses to fill staffing vacancies."

"Certification recognizes SNI's dedication to providing registered nurses that are qualified to provide safe, high-quality care to patients and ease the burden to healthcare facilities in this time of a critical nursing shortage. We are extremely proud to receive the Joint Commission Gold Seal of Approval."

The Joint Commission is an independent, not-for-profit organization and is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.

Contact: Terry Aisenstein, RN, Communications Coordinator
Phone: 267-532-1620

Date: Jan 1, 2011

2011 National Patient Safety Goals

-Hospital Program

Goal 1	Improve the accuracy of patient identification.
1A	Use at least two patient identifiers when providing care, treatment or services.
1C	Eliminate transfusion errors related to patient misidentification.
Goal 2	Improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers.
2C	Report critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures on a timely basis.
Goal 3	Improve the safety of using medications.
3D	Label all medications, medication containers, and other solutions on and off the sterile field in perioperative and other procedural settings.
3E	Reduce the likelihood of patient harm associated with the use of anticoagulant therapy. Note: This requirement applies only to hospitals that provide anticoagulant therapy and/or long-term anticoagulation prophylaxis (for example, atrial fibrillation) where the clinical expectation is that the patient’s laboratory values for coagulation will remain outside normal values. This requirement does not apply to routine situations in which short-term prophylactic anticoagulation is used for venous thrombo-embolism prevention (for example, related to procedures or hospitalization) and the clinical expectation is that the patient’s laboratory values for coagulation will remain within, or close to, normal values.
Goal 7	Reduce the risk of health care-associated infections.
7A	Comply with either the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hand hygiene guidelines or the current World Health Organization (WHO) Hand Hygiene Guidelines.
7C	Implement evidence-based practices to prevent health care–associated infections due to multidrug-resistant organisms in acute care hospitals. Note: This requirement applies to, but is not limited to, epidemiologically important organisms such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), clostridium difficile (CDI), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria.
7D	Implement evidence-based practices to prevent central line–associated bloodstream infections. Note: This requirement covers short- and long-term central venous catheters and peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) lines.
7E	Implement evidence-based practices for preventing surgical site infections.
Goal 8	Accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care.
8A	A process exists for comparing the patient’s current medications with those ordered for the patient while under the care of the hospital. Note: This standard is not in effect at this time.
8B	When a patient is referred to or transferred from one hospital to another, the complete and reconciled list of medications is communicated to the next provider of service, and the communication is documented. Alternatively, when a patient leaves the hospital’s care to go directly to his or her home, the complete and reconciled list of medications is provided to the patient’s known primary care provider, the original referring provider, or a known next provider of service. Note 1: When the next provider of service is unknown or when no known formal relationship is planned with a next provider, giving the patient and, as needed, the family the list of reconciled medications is sufficient. Note 2: This standard is not in effect at this time
8C	When a patient leaves the hospital’s care, a complete and reconciled list of the patient’s medications is provided directly to the patient and, as needed, the family, and the list is explained to the patient and/or family. Note: This standard is not in effect at this time
8D	In settings where medications are used minimally, or prescribed for a short duration, modified medication reconciliation processes are performed. Note 1: This requirement does not apply to hospitals that do not administer medications. It may be important for health care organizations to know which types of medications their patients are taking because these medications could affect the care, treatment, and services provided. Note 2: This standard is not in effect at this time
Goal 15	The hospital identifies safety risks inherent in its patient population.
15A	Identify patients at risk for suicide. Note: This requirement applies only to psychiatric hospitals and patients being treated for emotional or behavioral disorders in general hospitals.