DM program is first to be accredited by JCAHO
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) accredited the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Clinical Resource Management (CRM) Program in February, the first disease management program to be certified under the Disease-Specific Care certification program.
The program is the first of its kind to certify disease management protocols that serve patients suffering from specific chronic illnesses — such as asthma, diabetes, and congestive heart failure — isolate ways to improve outcomes, identify at-risk individuals, and promote prevention programs.
The Los Angeles County program covers pediatric asthma and involves close collaboration with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) Southern California Chapter, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Through their joint efforts, asthmatic children in Los Angeles have accounted for fewer emergency department visits and inpatient hospitalizations. According to JCAHO, the pediatric asthma program accomplished those results by using multidisciplinary teams of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, and patient service workers. Working closely with school nurses, these health care teams use a network of mobile clinics to reduce barriers to care and bring preventive health care to children at their school sites. An integrated computer information system supports patient tracking, health care delivery, education, and program evaluation.
Children who participate in the program usually are able to control their disease and participate in normal activities, even if they have a severe form of asthma. These children have 15% fewer emergency department visits, 30% fewer hospitalizations, and between a quarter and a third fewer missed school days — depending on the school level — due to illness within the first year they participate in the program.
Los Angeles County’s CRM Program has provided care for more than 4,000 pediatric asthma patients and was awarded certification following a thorough on-site evaluation. JCAHO’s new certification program standards emphasize attention to those aspects of care that most directly impact patients. The evaluation includes an assessment of compliance with consensus national standards, the demonstrated effective use of established clinical guidelines to manage and optimize care, and the measurement and improvement of health processes and outcomes.
For more information on the disease management certification program, visit the JCAHO web site at www.jcaho.org.
In other JCAHO news, the organization has launched an initiative to identify a basic set of outcomes-based measures for assessing the quality of hospital intensive care units.
In conjunction with the Washington, DC-based Leapfrog Group, JCAHO will convene an expert panel having both clinical and methodological expertise to determine an ICU measurement framework and formulate an initial set of specific performance measures. As part of this process, JCAHO is looking for outside input on existing measures that address care in medical, surgical, and medical/surgical intensive care settings. Other intensive care settings will be addressed in the future.
The initiative will take 12 - 18 months. Those wishing to submit potential sources of ICU core measures can visit a special section of the JCAHO web site at www.jcaho.org/perfmeas/cormeas/cm_frm.html. More information also is available from the associate project director, Nancy Lawlor, at (630) 792-5937.
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