Darlene A. Christiansen, RN, LNHA, MBA

Executive Director
Accreditation and Certification Services

Darlene Christiansen is the executive director of accreditation and certification services at The Joint Commission.  In this role, she is responsible for working with accredited organizations seeking to be re surveyed, and new organizations seeking to become accredited.  She oversees staff involved in pre-survey support and analysis of organizational data to design survey duration and complement and supervises the post survey process, which includes issuance of accreditation decisions and reports as well as monitoring the organizational database for intra-cycle monitoring events.  Ms. Christiansen is also responsible for business development in the hospital and critical access hospital accreditation programs.

Prior to her current position, Ms. Christiansen was the director of standards interpretation and the office of quality monitoring.  In this role, Ms. Christiansen was responsible for operational oversight for the standards interpretation functions, complaint processing, and sentinel event functions to include the review of root cause analyses and the management of the special surveyor cadre.  Previously, she was associate director in the hospital accreditation program, associate director for long term care accreditation services and long term care surveyor with expertise in general long term care, subacute, and dementia programming.

With more than thirty years of health care management experience, Ms. Christiansen has held numerous executive positions in hospital and post-acute settings.  Previous hospital experience included positions as assistant administrator, vice president of nursing, director of education, and director of performance improvement and management. Her nursing experience includes pediatric, operating room, surgical and medical intensive care units, infection control, neuro-rehabilitation, general medical surgical, emergency services, and psychiatric nursing.  Previous long term care/subacute experiences include positions as assistant administrator, subacute clinical director, regional nurse consultant, director of nursing, and administrator.

Ms. Christiansen’s educational background includes a master’s degree in business administration in finance/health care administration from George Williams College, a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of St. Francis, and a post-graduate certificate in long term care management/administration from the University of Illinois School of Public Health.