Knock knock! Who’s there? Could it be JCAHO?
Employee health standards under consideration
While some aspects of employee health have been included in general infection control standards established by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the agency’s surveyors soon may be probing employee health departments as separate entities, Hospital Employee Health has learned.
JCAHO, the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based private organization that accredits U.S. hospitals and other health care institutions, does not specifically require an employee health program. However, that may change, says Carole Patterson, deputy director of JCAHO’s department of standards.
Patterson says the organization presently is working with its committee on health care safety, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America "to discuss possible standards related directly to employee health issues."
JCAHO’s attention apparently is prompted at least in part by an increasing regulatory focus on health care worker safety issues, such as the tuberculosis standard proposed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the needle safety law recently passed in California. (See related story, p. 144.)
Two years ago, JCAHO and OSHA formed an unprecedented partnership for closer scrutiny of health care institutions’ regulatory compliance. The two standard-setting giants launched a program to give JCAHO surveyors the knowledge and ability to ensure that hospitals are complying with government standards for HCW safety during regularly scheduled inspections, without reporting violations to OSHA. (See Hospital Employee Health, December 1996, pp. 137-139.)
However, if JCAHO formulates its own employee health standards, hospitals not in compliance might receive "recommendations," the Joint Commission’s version of a citation.
Regarding safer needle devices, Patterson says JCAHO is exploring whether to address the issue in standards or through examples in its manual. When the new California OSHA bloodborne pathogens standard requiring the use of safer needle technology becomes effective in 1999, hospitals undergoing JCAHO inspections there would be surveyed for compliance with the law.
Even without a similar federal law, hospitals in other parts of the country would be reminded that "there’s a movement in this country toward safer needle devices," and asked, "What are you doing in this area? They would need to know their [needlestick] incidence rates," Patterson says. "Our process is consultative and educative."
The JCAHO manual also may be revised to include examples of safer needle devices, as well as a how-to for product evaluations that institutions must perform to select safer devices appropriate for their patient population and staff, Patterson adds.
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