The Joint Commission is a non-profit, independent organization that accredits over 21,000 health care programs and organizations. Their accreditation and certification standards are national symbols of quality, safety and high performance. Their mission is to continuously improve public health care by supporting, evaluating, collaborating and inspiring health care organizations.
Patient Safety
The Joint Commission monitors and advocates for legislation that promote better patient safety. When it comes to state legislation, The Joint Commission collaborates with patient safety authorities and state regulatory bodies to minimize unrealistic expectations and reform outdated rules. They push state regulatory bodies to rely more on private accreditation instead of mandatory state licensure inspections. The Joint Commission is working to reform state-level legislation for things like scope of practice and health care organization-based infections. At the federal level, they are seeking to reduce redundant regulatory codes and research local health care activities to improve national quality and safety.
Patient Safety Programs
The commission receives safety reports from patients, their families, the public, the media and government agencies. The information contained in these reports is used to improve the safety and quality of currently accredited health care organizations. If the patient safety event report demonstrates an organizational failure of one or more Joint Commission standards, an assessment is initiated to evaluate the organization’s compliance with those standards. The Joint Commission also engages in patient safety research through their own Department of Health Services Research. This department works with external partners to evaluate and investigate patient safety. These projects may involve the monitoring of surgical safety, the sharing of infection control guides and field research on program effectiveness.
The Sentinel Event Policy
The Sentinel Event Policy was released in 1996 and recently revised in 2014 to include new patient safety concepts and demystify Joint Commission processes. Any time a so called sentinel event occurs, the health care organization is asked to conduct a comprehensively credible analysis. The goal is to identify root causes, implement improvements, reduce risks and monitor program effectiveness. These analyses focus on the foundational systems and processes that should be altered to minimize future failures and problems. Although accredited organizations are not required to report sentinel events, they benefit from self-reporting because they receive support from the Joint Commission. They also have the opportunity to collaborate with patient safety experts and receive valuable advice.
The Benefits of The Joint Commission
The Joint Commission offers many benefits to their members. They help members organize and strengthen their patient improvement programs and safety efforts. They raise health care consumer and community confidence in the quality of the organization’s care, services and treatment. This provides a competitive edge in the health care industry and a proven framework for organizational management. The Joint Commission helps to reduce risk management, liability insurance and employee turnover costs. They education organizations on how to improve business operations, fulfill regulatory requirements in their state and enhance staff development and recruitment. Health care organization that work with The Joint Commission will experience better cooperation from insurers, vendors and other third parties.
The Core Measure Sets
The Core Measure Sets include performance measurements and accountability measures. To illustrate, accountability measures are really quality standards designed to produce the best impacts on patient outcomes. Accountability measures are classified by research, which requires strong scientific evidence that demonstrates specific actions improve specific health care outcomes, and proximity, which refers to how the process being measured connects to the impacted outcome. Accuracy refers to whether evidence-based process have been properly provided. Adverse effects are a measure that minimizes or eliminates unintended effects.
The Joint Commission demonstrates their longstanding commitment to providing meaningful performance data about accredited organizations to the public through their Quality Check website. Here, health care consumers can search and verify accreditation.
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