Editor's Note The Joint Commission on January 25 announced that Parrish Medical Center, Titusville, Florida, is the first hospital to be awarded its Integrated Care Certification. The Joint Commission began offering the certification in July 2015 to recognize hospitals and ambulatory care settings that excel at integrating information-sharing, transitions of…

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Preparation for a visit from the Joint Commission or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is key to a positive survey outcome. “There is nothing mysterious about Joint Commission or CMS compliance,” says John Rosing, MHA, FACHE, vice president and principal, Patton Healthcare Consulting, Naperville, Illinois. Ensuring compliance involves…

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Editor's Note A new, optional advanced certification program for total hip and total knee replacement is now available from the Joint Commission. The program will help accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals, and ambulatory surgery centers provide a consistent approach to patient care that reduces the risk of error and improves…

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Editor's Note California Senate Bill 396, designed to strengthen regulation of unlicensed outpatient surgery settings, goes into effect January 1, 2016, the Joint Commission reports. The Bill builds upon existing regulations that mandate facility accreditation of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and office-based surgery practices that are not state licensed or…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on December 7 announced a new Standards BoosterPak on high-level disinfection and sterilization. A Standards BoosterPak is a searchable document that provides detailed information about a standard that has been associated with a high volume of inquiries or non-compliance scores. The goal of the new…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on November 17 released its annual report on America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality and Safety, which summarizes data on 49 accountability measures reported by more than 3,300 accredited hospitals. For the first time, acute care hospitals were required to meet program criteria in six sets—an increase…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission is recognizing 40 years of accrediting ambulatory healthcare organizations with an online repository featuring photos, testimonials, and interviews with customers, staff, and surveyors. The ambulatory program covers a wide variety of organizations, including ambulatory surgery centers, cath labs, clinics, and imaging centers. Since 1975, the…

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Credentialing of physicians and other independent practitioners is facing increased scrutiny from surveyors, professional associations and, in some cases, the public—not necessarily because of compliance failures but because healthcare legislation and technology improvements have made the process a conversation topic. Thus it may be a good time to review the…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced September 2 that it has made changes to its CY 2016 ORYX performance measure reporting requirements to align with changes made by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Inpatient quality Reporting Program. The changes include retirement of seven chart-abstracted measures, addition…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission has identified five requirements for accreditation that healthcare organizations were most frequently found as “non compliant” during surveys and reviews from January 1 to June 30, 2015. They are: Laboratory and Point-of-Care Testing QSA.01.01.01: The laboratory participates in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved…

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