Joint Commission implementing survey improvements on assessing safety culture

Editor's Note

The Joint Commission on June 13 announced that starting this month it will be implementing survey process improvements for how it assesses safety culture in hospitals and critical access hospitals. Improvements will be implemented for all other programs by October.

Among the process improvement expectations:

• An organization will include its most recent Safety Culture Survey with documents required in the Survey Activity Guide.
• The survey team, on Survey Day 1, will provide a link to the video, “Leading the Way to Zero,” to be shown during the leadership session.
• Surveyors will be tracing and asking questions to assess an organization's safety culture as part of survey activities.

The improvements do not involve changes to standards or element of performance.