The Priority Focus Process is a data-driven tool that helps focus survey activity on issues most relevant to patient safety and quality of care at the specific health care organization being surveyed. The PFP uses automation to gather pre-survey data from multiple sources including The Joint Commission, the health care organization and other public sources. The PFP then applies rules to 1) identify areas of priority focus relevant standards and appropriate survey activities, and 2) guide the selection of patient tracers.
The PFP does not imply that priority areas are out of compliance or deficient in any way, rather, it lends consistency to the surveyor’s on-site sampling process. By providing surveyors with pre-survey information that has been developed using a standardized methodology, the PFP helps surveyors evaluate health care organizations’ performance more consistently. The PFP also helps to focus the surveyors’ assessment on quality and safety issues specific to an individual health care organization.
The output of the PFP process includes:
- The top four-to-five priority focus areas—the processes, systems or structures within a health care organization known to significantly impact the safety and quality of care specific to the health care organization being surveyed. The priority focus areas include, for example, communication, equipment use, infection control, organizational structure, patient safety and staffing.
- The clinical/service groups—groups of patients, residents or clients in distinct clinical populations for which data are collected. For example, in a hospital setting, clinical/service groups might include cardiology, general surgery or orthopaedic and rehabilitation. In an ambulatory setting, an example of clinical/service groups might be gastroenterology, obstetrics and pediatrics.
Information from the priority focus areas and clinical/service groups is then used to help guide the focus of the on-site survey activities.
The PFP reports will be posted to The Joint Commission Connect extranet site quarterly and as changes warrant. For more information about the PFP or the accreditation process, visit The Joint Commission website at www.jointcommission.org, or see your program manual.
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