In today’s health care facilities, certain patient conditions—known as “alert” conditions—are identified by color-coding devices (such as color-coded wristbands, stickers, and binders) in order to help prevent medical errors. From facility to facility, however—and sometimes within facilities—different colors are used to identify the same condition.

As part of their ongoing quality improvement initiatives, the Continuing Care Leadership Coalition (CCLC) and the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), developed this voluntary initiative, The Colors of Safety Across the Continuum of Care, to standardize color-coding of certain alert conditions with the guidance of a multidisciplinary steering group comprised of  members of CCLC and GNYHA.

The Colors of Safety Across the Continuum of Care initiative is intended to enhance patient safety by standardizing the color-coding of specific alert conditions across acute and long term care settings. This initiative seeks to spread awareness about these standardized identifiers among clinical and non-clinical staff in health care settings as well as to patients, residents, and their families.

The Colors of Safety Across the Continuum of Care requires standardization for the following three alert conditions:

Background

Eleven other states throughout the country (Arizona, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia) are implementing similar initiatives to standardize the color-coding of alert conditions, most of which are following the same pattern for color-coding three basic alert conditions: Do Not Resuscitate (DNR), Allergies, and Fall Risks.

Goals of the Initiative

It is intended that this standardized approach to identifying certain alert conditions in hospitals and long term care facilities will:

• reduce variation in practice and should result in more accurate identification of patients who are assessed to be at risk for certain alert conditions or who have DNR status;

• reduce the time needed to orient staff to institutional policies with regard to color-coding for alert conditions; and

• lead to improved staff satisfaction.

Support for the Initiative

The New York State Department of Health (DOH) is interested in adopting a voluntary standardization of color-coding initiative as part of its overall patient safety agenda and has agreed to provide GNYHA and CCLC with a letter of support for this initiative. In the letter, DOH congratulates GNYHA and CCLC for developing this initiative and states, "We will encourage other hospitals and nursing homes to adopt consistent color schemes as this can only serve to further reduce the variation in color schemes being utilized. We are confident that this program will create an important opportunity to improve patient safety. Our ultimate goal is for contiguous states to also adopt consistent schemes."

Project Contact

For more information, please contact Roxanne Tena-Nelson at CCLC (212-506-5412), Kelly Donohue at GNYHA (212-506-5424), or Lorraine Ryan at GNYHA ( 212-506-5416).