Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.
As part of its shift to a “substantially new” accreditation process, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is testing an unannounced survey process. Beginning in January 2004, health care providers can volunteer to participate in a pilot program to test the new process, which will take effect for all JCAHO-accredited entities by 2006.
“The new accreditation process — dubbed Shared Visions-New Pathways — creates the expectation that each accredited organization be in compliance with 100 percent of the Joint Commission's standards 100 percent of the time,” said Dennis O'Leary, JCAHO's president.
Already, four hospital systems have volunteered to participate in the pilot program, giving JCAHO permission to conduct three unannounced surveys per year. The incentive for volunteering is good publicity, according to Mark Forstneger, a Dennis O'Leary, JCAHO president. JCAHO spokesman.
But Neil Caesar, president of the Greenville, S.C.-based Health Law Center, sees the situation differently. “The only incentives to be part of this pilot program would be masochism and a desire to go out of business,” he said. “I can't imagine volunteering for this.”
Compliance is a process, and no system is perfect every day of the week, Caesar explained. “A good compliance system is expected to recognize and deal with imperfection — not to achieve perfection,” he said.
“All this will do is drive more providers away from JCAHO,” Caesar continued. Although JCAHO has a monopoly in the hospital sector, home care providers have a choice of accreditation organizations, he said. “Over the next three years, there will be a groundswell of significant opposition to what [JCAHO is] thinking,” he predicted.
Unannounced surveys are not new for JCAHO. The organization already conducts one-day, random, unannounced surveys annually at 5 percent of JCAHO-accredited entities. However, beginning in 2006, unannounced surveys will be the norm for JCAHO, and the current sampling system will cease to exist, the organization said.
For breaking news, go to www.homecaremonday.com, the electronic news service of the home medical equipment industry.
