SEIU accuses JCAHO of improprieties
Was union behind this push to limit authority?
The next time surveyors from the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations come from Oakbrook Terrace, IL, for a visit, there may be a few extra folks tagging along. If so, they’re probably from the federal Office of the Inspector General (OIG), accompanying the Joint Commission on some of its hospital surveys.
Ben St. John, OIG public affairs officer, denies that the OIG’s review of hospital quality oversight is tied to recent allegations leveled against the Joint Commission by the AFL-CIO-affiliated Service Employees International Union (SEIU), based in Washington, DC. The 1.1 million-member union, which includes about 500,000 heath care workers, charges that the Joint Commission has "repeatedly sought to obstruct the union’s efforts to obtain basic accreditation information," which it claims should be readily available to the public, says Elizabeth Engberg, a senior research analyst for SEIU.
In a letter to the Joint Commission, the union also alleges that during a survey of Columbia Sunrise in Las Vegas, the commission rebuffed its attempts to "obtain honest information from the people who know the facility best: registered nurses and other frontline health care workers."
"Our contention about the JCAHO accreditation process in general is that they don’t take into account front-line workers and what they see in terms of quality problems," says Engberg. "[Surveyors] may stop and talk to them in the hall when they have the director of nursing or the head of administration with them, but they have no confidential, systematic way of soliciting their opinions."
In the case of Columbia Sunrise, Engberg contends members of the staff weren’t allowed to give Joint Commission surveyors unprepared statements, and were schooled in what they could say. The union also charges that the Joint Commission responded inadequately to its members’ complaints about the commission’s accreditation of that hospital.
According to an SEIU statement, the union is calling on OIG to expand its review of the commission’s practice to include possible conflicts of interest stemming from the Joint Commission’s dependence on health care industry funding, and possible improprieties in the Joint Commission’s handling of the Las Vegas survey and other Columbia/HCA-related matters.
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