Joint Commission brings more info to the public
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the nation’s leading quality of care evaluator in health care organizations, has launched a series of public accountability initiatives to ensure the availability of information about the quality of care provided in accredited health care organizations to consumers.
"The Joint Commission has long been attuned to its public accountability," Dennis O’Leary, president of the Joint Commission, said in announcing the initiatives. "This accountability is demonstrated in every aspect of our organization — from policy-setting by our Board of Commissioners; to the establishment of consensus-based, state-of-the-art standards; to rendering objective accreditation decisions based on actual organization performance; to providing to the public important information about the quality of care in Joint Commission-accredited health care organizations."
Check the Web site
The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits nearly 19,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including almost 11,000 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 8,000 other health care organizations that provide long-term care, behavioral health care, laboratory, and ambulatory care services. One of the initiatives, "Quality Check — A Comprehensive Guide to Learning About the Quality of Health Care Organizations," is on the Joint Commission’s Web site (www.jcaho.org).
Quality Check provides information about each Joint Commission-accredited health care organization and program. This information includes the organization’s name, address, telephone number, accreditation decision at the time of its last full survey, date of accreditation, and current accreditation status. Quality Check also provides access to organization-specific performance reports for most accredited organizations. Performance reports detail the organization’s overall performance level; its performance level in key areas; areas identified as needing improvement, if any; and for most organizations, a display of how the individual organization compares to other organizations nationally in each performance area.
"This is the first time I’ve seen information that has some teeth in it. . . . Quality Check really evaluates the care at particular hospitals," said Jean Campbell, PhD, of the Missouri Institute of Mental Health. "The information presented on Quality Check is leading the movement to consumer health informatics, empowering consumers around issues of choice."
Additional significant information that the Joint Commission makes available to the public includes the following:
• Listing of scheduled surveys — The Joint Commission posts the dates of upcoming full surveys on Quality Check. Interested parties can search for organizations due for survey within the next month or those that were surveyed within the previous two months.
• Consumer brochures — The Joint Commission publishes a series of consumer brochures to help individuals choose a hospital, home care provider, nursing home, assisted living community, outpatient surgery center, behavioral health care facility, or laboratory service. These free brochures are designed to help the public identify quality health care services. A special feature is a list of questions to help the user engage in discussion with the health care provider organizations. For a free copy of any of the brochures, call the Joint Commission’s Customer Service Center at (630) 792-5800, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CST, on weekdays. The Helping You Choose brochures also are available on the Joint Commission’s Web site.
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