Accreditation of Health Care

Bates, D.W., Preventing Medication Errors. In Medication Use A Systems Approach to Reducing Errors (D.D. Cousins, ed.). Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, Oakbrook Terrace, IL, 1999, pp. 57-73. 

Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. 1998 Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals. A.M.H Oakbrook Terrace, IL 1997. 

Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health-Care Organizations... 

Joint Commission on Accreditation of health care Organizations (JCAHO) a private, not-for-profit organization that evaluated and accredits hospitals and other health care organizations providing home care, mental health care, ambulatory care, and long term care services. 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has incorporated pneumococcal and influenza immunization rates into some of their quality standards. Patients admitted to a hospital for community-acquired pneumonia should be screened for, offered, and vaccinated with pneumococcal and influenza vaccines prior to discharge if not previously administered. In physicians office practice, all persons over 65 years of age who have been hospitalized in the past year should be screened for, offered, and vaccinated with pneumococcal and influenza vaccines if not previously administered. Both of these standards will affect payment if the standard is not met. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has also incorporated these standards into their accreditation reviews of health care facilities. 

The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization founded in 1951 by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons (O Malley, 1997). The Joint Commission was established to continuously improve the safety and quality of health care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations ... 

Since establishment of the Joint Commission, the scope of health care organizations that are eligible for accreditation has widened from hospitals to encompass health systems and now even pharmacy benefit... 

All payers of health care bills are focused on issues of quality and value. Accrediting agencies are following a similar strategy as they look for positive health outcome indicators. The ultimate payer is moving health care providers into an era of assessment and accountability, because too little objective evidence exists that supports a positive correlation between rising costs, quality of care, and optimal health outcomes. 

Allison, David J. (ed.) (1997), Planning, Designing, and Construction of Health Care Environments, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Oakbrook, III. 

All procedures performed in this study conform to the "Guide to the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals published by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. All research facilities are accredited by the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care. 

While health care accreditation organizations have existed for quite a while, quality data were not readily available to the general public until recendy. These quality measurements (sometimes called report cards ) make health care quality indicators readily available to the public. This encourages health care organizations to compete on the basis of quality and creates markets where quality, not just cost containment, is rewarded (Blumenthal and Kilo, 1998 O Malley, 1997). 

In the future, the accreditation process may become more focused on outcomes measurement. Eventually, health care report cards may be more accessible and easy to understand, thus helping to produce a market for quality. Some discussion of adjusting copayments to encourage patients to use providers that meet the standards purchasers have set has already occurred (Lovern, 2001). In some cases, pharmacy quality improvement may be mandated by state and local governments. For example, a new law in the state of Arizona requires that every pharmacy participate in a CQI program (Arizona Revised Statutes, 2007). 

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