Published monthly, The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety is a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to providing health professionals with the information they need to promote the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety invites original manuscripts on the development, adaptation, and/or implementation of innovative thinking, strategies, and practices in improving quality and safety in health care. Case studies, program or project reports, reports of new methodologies or new applications of methodologies, research studies on the effectiveness of improvement interventions, and commentaries on issues and practices are all considered.

In addition to feature articles—full-length descriptions of quality and safety programs, methods, or strategies, including the rationale, planning, implementation, evaluation, and lessons learned, the Journal also offers shorter articles in departments such as Interviews, Field Notes, Tool Tutorials, Rapid Response Systems, and Case Studies in Brief.

For the full range of topics covered in the Journal, please see the Guidelines for Authors.

Executive Editor: Steve Berman
Senior Project Manager: Cheryl Firestone
Statistical Consultant: Stephen Schmaltz, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Publications: Catherine Chopp Hinckley, Ph.D.

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The Editorial Advisory Board and Submission Guidelines are listed below.

No statement in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety should be construed as an official position of The Joint Commission or Joint Commission Resources unless otherwise stated. In particular, there has been no official review with regard to matters of standards compliance.

Subscription Information
Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (ISSN 1553-7250) is published monthly (12 issues per year, 1 volume per year) by Joint Commission Resources, One Renaissance Boulevard, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181. 

Annual subscription rates for 2012

United States, Canada, and Mexico

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3	$634	$762	$2,537

Rest of the world
 

Number of Years	Online Only,  Single User	Print and  Online, Single User	Site License
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2	$448	$664	$1,791
3	$634	$948	$2,537

Direct all inquiries to Customer Service for Periodicals at 800/746-6578 from  6am to 7pm EST or via email at fulfill@superfill.com. Send address corrections to TheJoint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, Superior Fulfillment, 131 West First Street, Duluth MN 55802-2065.

©2012 by Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Joint Commission Resources, Inc (JCR), a not-for-profit affiliate of the Joint Commission, has been designated by the Joint Commission to publish publications and multimedia products. JCR reproduces and distributes the materials under license from the Joint Commission.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any reasons without written permission.

2012 Editorial Advisory Board
Gerry Armitage, PhD
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Bradford, United Kingdom

Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP
University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
Chicago

Elizabeth H. Bradley, PhD 
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

Dale W. Bratzler, DO, MPH
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City

Marcy Carty, MD, MPH
Steward Healthcare/Good Samaritan Medical Center
Brockton, Massachusetts

John Degelau, MD, MS
HealthPartners Medical Group
Minneapolis

Adrienne L. Elberfeld, MSc Candidate
St. Mary Medical Center
Langhorne, Pennsylvania

Nancy C. Elder, MD, MSPH
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Cincinnati

Neil S. Fleming, PhD
Baylor Health Care System
Dallas

Rhona Flin, BSc, PhD, CPsychol
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

Richard C. Hermann, MD, MS
Tufts–New England Medical Center
Boston

Rick Iedema, PhD
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia

Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPH
New York–Presbyterian Hospital
New York City

Peter K. Lindenauer, MD, MSc
Baystate Medical Center
Springfield, Massachusetts

Yuanli Liu, PhD
Harvard university School of Public Health
Boston

Jorge Cesar Martinez, MD
del Salvador University - Mother and Infant Hospital Ramón Sarda
Buenos Aires

Ziad Memish, MD, FRCPC, FACP
Ministry of Health
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

John Øvretveit, PhD, CPsychol, CSci
Karolinska Institutet Medical Management Centre
Stockholm

Wilson D. Pace, MD
University of Colorado
Denver

Emily S. Patterson, PhD
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio

Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD
Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Baltimore

Roger Resar, MD
Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Matthew Scanlon, MD
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin
Milwaukee

Lisa Schilling, RN, MPH
Kaiser Permanente
Oakland, California

James G. Stevenson, PharmD
University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Nancy L. Szaflarski, PhD, RN, FCCM
Stanford Hospital & Clinics
Stanford, California

Mark Van Kooy, MD
Aspen Advisors, LLC
Pittsburgh

Brook Watts, MD, MS
Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center
Cleveland

Saul N. Weingart, MD, PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston

Albert W. Wu, MD, MPH
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health
Baltimore
 

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The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety is a peer-reviewed journal that serves as a forum for practical approaches to improving quality and safety in health care. Specific interest areas include
• Performance improvement
• Organizational change and learning
• Leadership
• Methods, tools, and strategies
• Performance measures
• Evidence-based medicine
• Timeliness and efficiency
• Emergency management
• Health professions education
• Information technology
• Patient and family involvement
• Medication safety
• Human factors engineering
• Risk and event assessment 
• Reporting systems
• Teamwork and communication
• Continuity of care
• National Patient Safety Goals
• Missed or delayed diagnosis
• Health care disparities
• Cultural competence
• Safety culture
• Research methods

Overall Content
Published monthly, The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety is dedicated to providing health care providers and quality and safety professionals with the information they need to promote the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety invites original manuscripts on the development, adaptation, and/or implementation of innovative thinking, strategies, and practices in improving quality and safety in health care. The descriptive ("this is what we did") and prescriptive ("this is how to do it") information is intended to help readers adapt activities to improve quality and safety to their own organizations. Case studies, program or project reports, reports of new methodologies or new applications of methodologies, research studies, and commentaries on issues and practices are all considered. No statement in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety should be construed as an official position of The Joint Commission or Joint Commission Resources unless otherwise stated. In particular, there has been no official review with regard to matters of standards compliance. 
 
Submission Guidelines
Feature articles:
Feature articles should not exceed 4,000 words, not including illustrations and references. Articles should consist of background, rationale, methods or implementation, results, and discussion, but this will depend on the nature of the article. When possible, articles should contain case studies or problems and practical solutions. For manuscripts on the development and testing of interventions to improve the quality and safety of health care, authors are encouraged to use the SQUIRE Publications Guidelines (http://www.squire-statement.org).  

Departments:
Manuscripts are invited for the following:
• Letters: Letters can pertain to an article or department published in the Journal or to any issue, topic, or project in quality and safety in health care.
• Field Notes (limit, 1,000 words): Field Notes provides a forum for brief papers on works in progress.
• Tool Tutorial: Tool Tutorial describes new tools or new uses for current tools that can be used in any quality or safety activity.
• Rapid Response Systems: Innovative approaches to or important issues in rapid response systems, which usually involves rapid response teams (also called medical emergency teams).
• Case Study in Brief (limit, 2,000 words): Case Study in Brief provides pragmatic, hands-on examples of how organizations address quality and safety issues and problems.
• Forum: Commentaries on issues and practices of typical interest.
• Frontline Tips: Quality and safety tips from practitioners “in the trenches.” 

Please contact the editor for further guidance. 

Submission Process
An electronic version (Microsoft Word or ASCII format), preferably as an e-mail attachment, is required. By a jointly signed cover letter or by e-mail correspondence, all authors should confirm that the manuscript represents original work that has not been published or is not being considered for publication elsewhere and that they have all contributed to, and approve of, the manuscript. Copies of any closely related manuscripts, whether published or in development, should be submitted along with the manuscript that is to be considered by the Journal. On manuscript submission, authors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest or provide a declaration of no conflicts of interest. 
 
Preparation of Manuscript
Manuscripts should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins at top, bottom, and sides, and in 12-point type. The order of items in the manuscript is the title page, acknowledgments, abstract, text, references, legends, tables, and figures. All pages should be numbered.

Title Page. Include the title of the article, lead author's address and contact information, authors’ (no more than 10) names and titles, affiliations, and, if different, the affiliation when the article was written. Grant support that requires acknowledgement must be mentioned on the title page. Any commercial associations that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article must also be disclosed.

Acknowledgments. Obtain permission to reprint or adapt any illustrations of tables published previously; a copy of the original signed letter granting such approval must accompany the manuscript. All material reprinted or adapted from previously published literature must be accompanied by the name of the original author, title of the article, title of the journal or book in which it appears, date of publication, and publisher’s city and name.

Abstract. Provide a structured abstract of 270 or fewer words.

Text. Use only standard abbreviations and acronyms; spell out at first use and use short version thereafter. Use generic names for drugs whenever possible. If using brand names, put in parenthesis after first citing generic names.

References. Number references consecutively as they are cited.  Citations to periodicals should include the information shown in the following example, in the same order and with the same punctuation, capitalization, and use of italics. This example shows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) uniform requirements, also known as the Vancouver style, for periodicals. Vancouver should be used for periodical sources only. Please note that these examples show full page ranges and italicized periodical titles, which are deviations from the Vancouver style. (See also http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html.)

Examples: Author Name(s). Title of article. Journ abbrev. Year abbreviated month day if known;volume(issue number):inclusive page numbers.

Halpern SD, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jul 25;347(4):284–287.

Simpson KR, et al. Michigan Health & Hospital Association Keystone Obstetrics: A Statewide collaborative for perinatal patient safety in Michigan. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 37(12):544–552.

Authors are responsible for accuracy. Please consult the JCR Editorial Style Manual References section for more information.

Tables and Figures. Cite tables and figures (for example, Table 1, Figure 1) consecutively in the text. All tables and figures should have titles and be easily understood. Figures should also have short legends that comment on the information in the figure.

Editorial Process
Authors are notified on receipt of a manuscript and again upon the editorial decision regarding publication.

Manuscript review. Manuscripts deemed suitable for publication are sent to Editorial Advisory Board members and/or other reviewers. Notification of the editorial decision is usually provided within to eight weeks from receipt of manuscript. Publication of solicited manuscripts is not guaranteed. In most cases, manuscripts are accepted conditionally, pending an author’s revision of the material.

Copyright. When a manuscript is accepted for publication, the author(s) is required to sign an assignment of copyright ownership to The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

Author Approval. Authors are responsible for all statements in articles, including changes made by editors. The liaison author must be available for consultation with an editor of The Journal to answer questions during the editorial process and to approve edited copy. Authors receive edited typescript (not galley proofs) for final approval. Changes cannot be made to the copy after the edited version has been approved.
 

Other Inquiries:
Please direct all inquiries, manuscripts, and related correspondence to
Steven Berman, Executive Editor
Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Joint Commission Resources
One Renaissance Blvd.
Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois 60181
Phone: (630) 792-5453
Fax: (630) 792-4453
sberman@jcrinc.com
 

For information about advertising in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety or to request a media kit, please contact Robert Reed at reedmedi@sbcglobal.net.

To download the 2012 Media Kit, click here.

Contact the editor
Steve Berman, Executive Editor
Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Joint Commission Resources
One Renaissance Boulevard
Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois 60181
630/792-5453
630/792-4453 (fax)
sberman@jcrinc.com 

Contact information for related subjects:
For questions about advertising or business communications, contact Robert Reed at reedmedi@sbcglobal.net.

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