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I feel more a partnership with Joint Commission
than just paying for a service.
I've been a Medical Technologist for a lot of years,
and was brought up on one of the other accrediting agencies,
and so I was totally sold.
As I became more experienced,
and learned more about The Joint Commission,
there were a number of things that struck me,
as to why it would behoove the laboratory
to partner with Joint Commission.
One of the things that I appreciated most was the process
in which they did a survey.
The standards are excellent and not that much different
from some of the other accrediting agencies,
but with Joint Commission,
one of the things that happened was the tracer
where we actually focused on the patient, instead of focusing on the lab operation.
So all of a sudden, now the focus is where it should be:
through quality control, through quality assurance,
through proficiency testing,
all of these things that we do in the laboratory,
to validate that result that we give to whoever ordered the test,
we can say, "To the best of our ability we know this is right."
Joint Commission, I appreciate that I'm not just getting in the laboratory
and looking at the laboratory operations,
we actually get out into the hospital and say,
"Okay, this result went to here, and how was it acted on?"
Because we can give you information all day,
if it's never acted on
then we haven't done our best for that patient.
One of the things I appreciate by Joint Commission
is their pricing structure,
and we're looking at differences,
significant differences-- up to 60% less
than what we had to spend with our previous accreditor.
It's not often in this day and age, when you can have that kind of savings,
but actually improve the service.
It's a win-win.
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