Joint Commission Essay

The Joint commission, Department of Health & Human Services DHHS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CMS and The American Optometric Association AOA are responsible for a variety of duties ranging from, quality assurance to licensing and certification of hospitals and healthcare organizations.

The Joint commission, is a private agency with considerable power over healthcare institutions in that it performs certain responsibilities yet it is outside of the government. One of the Joint commission’s roles is monitoring quality in hospital services. This includes monitoring that standards are met in hospital laboratories. It is also responsible for auditing logs and confirming that instrumentation calibration is keep to standards. JCAHO is also well known for announcing their arrival for inspection in a few days to surprise inspections. In many cases this

setoff the alarms to everyone by creation a scramble to make sure logs, policies and procedures are all documented and ready to show evidence of compliance.
The Joint Commission covers almost all areas of the hospital and a wide variety of departments.

For this reason all involved must know what is expected as well as all the regulations expected for each area. The Joint commission has its roots from the American College of Surgeons (ACS). The ACS started the practice of inspecting hospitals and their practices in particular instrumentation. Since the early 1950’s the ACS spurred the creation of the Joint Commission. Similar to The Joint Commission the American Osteopathic Association has the authority to accredit healthcare institutions. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CMS is the authorizing body that deems the AOA as “deeming authority.” In the same way the Joint Commission is. A wide range of healthcare facilities are certified by AOA or JCAHO such as clinics, medical groups, surgical centers, outpatient centers among others. In the case of nursing homes they need to be certified by Department of Health & Human Services DHHS as well as the Joint Commission in order to be able to receive financial remittance form both Medicare and

Medicaid.
The department of health and human services DHHS has created the guidelines each institution has to follow in order to meet patient safety by following set standards and checked by quality controls. These are considered “conditions of participation”, which are imposed as rules which must be followed. If all the conditions are met by the hospital or healthcare entity, then they can participate in Medicare or Medicaid billing and reimbursement.
In Sum all of these agencies have an overall common goal. The improvement of patient care, patient safety, setting standards and conducting inspections as well as audits of the policies and procedures for the purpose confirming standards and rules are being met. Over all these agencies collaborate working together to cover hospitals, medical group clinics rehabilitation centers to name a few. AOA, DHHD, CMS and Joint Commission all control and watch over the adherence of the rules prescribed. The standards for qualifications are constantly changing with the improvement of processes, procedures and technology which are led by medical advancements and instrumentation improvement.