Health care organizations, governmental agencies, and Ministries of Health around the world can now begin their journey to higher quality patient care with the International Essentials of Health Care Quality and Patient Safety(TM) ("Essentials") from Joint Commission International (JCI). Essentials is a quality and safety improvement framework designed to help organizations focus on five risk areas that have the greatest impact on improving health care quality and patient safety. The Essentials criterion and rationale are posted on JCI's website: JCI, the international arm of The Joint Commission, works with Ministries of Health around the globe to assess the quality and patient safety performance of their constituent hospitals, and accredits more than 200 hospitals worldwide.

JCI recognizes that health care organizations around the world are called upon to provide high quality, safe patient care despite limited financial and human resources. The Essentials framework was developed to help organizations focus on the safety risk areas that will have the highest impact on patient safety.

"The mission of JCI is to improve the quality and safety of health care globally, and by offering the Essentials framework, we are now able to more efficiently assist health care organizations at every stage of their journey to higher quality care," says Karen H. Timmons, president and CEO, JCI. "As part of the Essentials program launch, JCI is proud to have Mexico as the first country to demonstrate this product to other countries internationally."

The JCI Essentials provide guidance by identifying the five risk areas on which organizations can focus their initial quality management and improvement efforts. These five areas, named "Essentials" from the extensive health care literature on quality and safety, include criteria for each risk area. These criteria were developed from JCI's standards and experiences in helping organizations around the world begin the quality improvement journey.

The five risk areas are:

-- Leadership Process and Accountability

-- Competent and Capable Workforce

-- Safe Environment for Staff and Patients

-- Clinical Care of Patients

-- Improving Quality and Safety

The Essentials are designed to provide clear and achievable risk reduction expectations. Levels of effort are identified for each criterion to provide a means for evaluating progress in reducing risk and improving quality. A complimentary copy of the Essentials program will be available to all health care organizations around the globe.

"Increasingly, JCI has been asked to provide assistance to organizations and countries that are focusing on the foundational elements of quality and safety, which may eventually serve as a step toward national or international accreditation. The Essentials methodology for improving quality and safety is an accumulation of the knowledge necessary to achieve the level of health care safety and quality that meets the needs of all stakeholders," adds Timmons.

Joint Commission International (JCI) was established in 1997 as a division of Joint Commission Resources, Inc. (JCR), a private, not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission. Through international accreditation, consultation, publications and education programs, JCI extends The Joint Commission's mission worldwide by helping to improve the quality of patient care by assisting international health care organizations, public health agencies, health ministries and others evaluate, improve and demonstrate the quality of patient care and enhance patient safety in more than 60 countries.