Joint Commission plans survey changes

The Joint Commission has begun the process of refining its survey process, changing the scoring process to make sure that surveyors are accurately measuring how closely healthcare organizations comply with the standards. The changes will apply to ambulatory healthcare, critical access and traditional hospitals, home care and office-based surgery programs. Joint Commission executives aren't being specific about the changes yet, but they did say that they're looking at tying standards to outcome measures. Commission execs are also planning to tweak standards to make them program-specific, consolidating similar standards and deleting redundant or unnecessary standards. The overall goal is to make the standards as relevant as possible, they said. The Joint Commission began accepting feedback on the proposed changes on May 9, and will accept comments for six weeks.

To find out more about the proposed standards:
- Comment on the proposals

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