Joint Commission drafts office-based standards
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in Oakbrook Terrace, IL, has drafted specific standards for the accreditation of office-based surgery practices. The final standards are expected to go into effect Nov. 1, 2000.
"Existing standards for hospitals and freestanding surgical facilities are too cumbersome for small office practices," says Rebecca S. Twersky, MD, medical director of the Ambulatory Surgery Unit at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Twersky has worked with the Joint Commission to develop the draft standards.
Although office-based practices have been accredited for some time under the ambulatory care standards, those standards have been restructured for the office-based setting, and language was removed that wasn’t applicable to offices. The draft standards are posted on the Joint Commission’s Web site (www.jcaho.org/standard/obs.html) and cover these areas:
- quality of care;
- patient safety;
- improving care and improving health;
- qualified and competent staff;
- responsible leadership;
- customer service.
The only completely new standards are for credentialing and self-assessment, says Lynne Bergero, MHSA, associate director of the Division of Research at the Joint Commission. Those new standards recognize that offices don’t have the infrastructure that exists in other ambulatory facilities. For example, under the current credentialing standards in all of the facility manuals, some staff person or group credentials the physicians.
"There’s a whole set of rules, procedures, and timetables guiding how credentialing should be done," she says. Offices with one to three physicians aren’t going to have those types of mechanisms in place, Bergero acknowledges.
"What the credentialing and self-assessment standards propose for the office-based surgery physicians is that they do self-credentialing, that they gather information on themselves," she says. The standards require that they demonstrate they are licensed and that they have relevant education, relevant experience, and relevant training.
At press time, the Joint Commission’s Standards and Survey Procedures Committee was scheduled to review the standards for approval on Oct. 3. The standards will be available in the Accreditation Manual for Office-Based Surgery Practices.
Sources
Office-based surgery practices interested in becoming accredited can contact:
- Mike Dye, Accreditation Program Department, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health-care Organizations, One Renaissance Blvd., Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181. Telephone: (630) 792-5259 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT, weekdays. Fax: (630) 792-4259. E-mail: [email protected].
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