Health Care Services Certification
The Joint Commission’s Health Care Services Certification Program, to be launched in 2008, is a new evaluation program for health care services which are provided to patients in a wide variety of health care settings and play an important role in the management of direct patient care.
The Joint Commission’s Health Care Services Certification Program incorporates the underlying concepts of clinical microsystems, studied extensively at Dartmouth College, which emphasize the importance of patient-centered care and teamwork in focusing on the front line of service delivery. A microsystem is a small group of people who work together on a regular basis ― or an as-needed basis ― to provide care to a discrete sub-population of patients. The microsystem also includes the patients receiving care.
Eligible organizations
The Joint Commission offers a basic, or primary, certification for health care programs that manage direct patient care services such as:
- Brain and spinal cord injury
- Cardiac care
- Geri-psychiatric
- Oncology
- Orthopedic
- Physical rehabilitation
- Subacute care
- Ventilator care
- Women’s health care
- Wound care
In addition, advanced programs will be developed that focus on specific clinical service areas as defined by market indicators, demand and other strategic factors.
Palliative Care
The first advanced certification will be offered for palliative care services. It will consist of the primary program requirements, plus a palliative care addendum. These programs will be awarded Health Care Services Certification in Palliative Care.
Standards
Draft standards for public comment are available here until April 8.
Standards are being developed to evaluate how well an organization integrates microsystems thinking, a patient-centered care focus, and service-specific concepts into their routine approach and delivery of services. These initiatives will also be the focus of performance improvement requirements incorporated into the program. The focus of the core standards are:
- Service management
- Service delivery
- Information management
- Performance improvement
For some direct patient services such as palliative care, it is anticipated that additional standards unique to the service being evaluated will also be applied. These service-specific requirements encourage the individual service to evaluate its practices using evidence-based national guidelines or expert consensus to guide the service practices. In the absence of national guidelines or expert consensus, health care services may incorporate a review and evaluation of the health care literature to guide their practices. It is expected that the identified processes will be implemented consistently across the service.