JCAHO’s accreditation categories changed
In an effort to make its accreditation categories more user-friendly for consumers, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is renaming two of them, effective Jan. 1, 2002. The categories were renamed in order to better convey to consumers an organization’s level of performance.
Accreditation without Type I Recommendations becomes Accreditation with Full Standards Compliance, which is awarded to health care organizations that demonstrate satisfactory compliance with applicable JCAHO standards in all performance areas.
Accreditation with Type I Recommendations becomes Accreditation with Requirements for Improvement, and will be awarded to health care organizations that demonstrate satisfactory compliance with applicable JCAHO standards in most performance areas but have deficiencies in one or more performance areas or accreditation policy requirements that require resolution within a specified time period.
Also, the Accreditation Committee modified the 2002 Conditional Accreditation decision rules to increase the summary grid score threshold for a recommendation of Conditional Accreditation from 75 to 79.
If applied to 2000 survey results, the new threshold would have increased the incidence of Conditional Accreditation decisions from 2.3% to 4.1%.
Another development at the Joint Commission involves when to include physician practices in organization surveys.
Under new rules adopted by the Executive Committee, the physician practice will be included in an organization’s survey if:
- The organization includes the practice in its Medicare cost report as a provider-based practice.
- The physician is an employee of the organization and the organization and/or the physician practice affirmatively portrays to the public that the physician practice is part of the organization through either:
- using common names or logos;
- placing references on letterhead, brochures, telephone book listings or web sites;
- putting representations on other published materials.
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