The Joint Commission has released data showing the top five areas of noncompliance with standards, national patient safety goals, and other requirements in the first half of 2013. In critical access hospitals, for instance, 53% of facilities were found noncompliant with requirements to maintain fire safety equipment and fire safety building features. Among hospitals in general, 55% were found not to properly “maintain complete and accurate medical records for each individual patient.”

According to the Joint Commission, the data are used to “identify trends and focus education on challenging requirements,” and “identify risk areas to highlight in the Focused Standards Assessment (FSA) process.” The list of the noncompliant items for each program is available on the Joint Commission website (PDF).