Joint Commission commemorates 40th anniversary of ambulatory care accreditation
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…
Surveyors reveal how to get credit for credentialing
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…
Joint Commission announces 2016 ORYX performance measure changes
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…
Joint Commission identifies top five challenging requirements
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…
Joint Commission updates ASC accreditation survey guide
Editor's Note The Joint Commission has updated its “Ambulatory Care Accreditation Survey Activity Guide for Health Care Organizations,” and has made it available on the Joint Commission Connect extranet site. Among the updates: Survey document list: A new item has been added requesting identification of all locations where high-level disinfection…
Joint Commission offers new integrated care certification
Editor's Note The Joint Commission is offering a new integrated care certification option that is focused on helping health care organizations improve coordination across the continuum of care. The new certification assesses how well a health care organization integrates information sharing, transitions of care, hand-off communications, and other key activities…
Hospital accreditation options expand beyond Joint Commission
In the past, most hospitals automatically sought accreditation from the Joint Commission, but recent years have brought new players to the field, prompting hospital administrators to rethink that strategy. One relatively new player is DNV GL-Healthcare (DNV GL). Since achieving deeming authority from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services…
AAAHC issues guidelines for obese patients
Screening heavier patients for ambulatory surgery just became a little easier, thanks to a new brochure from the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) Institute for Quality Improvement, Skokie, Illinois. Titled “Ambulatory surgery and obesity in adults: Preventing complications,” the two-page toolkit draws on some 40 research articles outlining…
Don't err on air pressure: Joint Commission is watching
Moving quickly up the ranks of the top 10 most frequently scored standards for Joint Commission accreditation is EC.02.05.01. At the end of 2012, this standard was just barely in tenth place, with 34% of hospitals noncompliant. By the first half of 2013, it had moved to fourth place and…
Be prepared for when surveyors come knocking
Nobody wants to come to work some morning and find a team of inspectors waiting. There is nothing like a surprise exam to make one nervous. Yet inspections are necessary—and not necessarily evil. Ambulatory surgery center (ASC) inspections are required for Medicare certification by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid…
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