The Joint Commission regularly updates its Health Care Equity Accreditation Standards & Resource Center to help organizations meet its healthcare equity standards. The resource center includes:
- Snapshots: Brief synopses of approaches used by other organizations.
- Soundbites: Brief videos of organizations’ lessons learned.
- Strategies: Links to resources such as toolkits, templates and guides.
New resources have been added to the center chronicling the efforts undertaken by Boston Medical Center (BMC), a 514-bed, private, not-for profit, academic medical center located in Boston's historic South End. With 70 medical specialties and subspecialties, over 1 million patient visits are conducted at the organization per year. The resources include:
- Six new Snapshots focusing on the challenges, successes and lessons learned during the academic medical center’s healthcare equity journey.
- Six new Soundbites videos with BMC leaders describing:
- The important role of leadership in developing, implementing, and monitoring activities to reduce healthcare disparities in their organization’s patient population.
- The assessment of social needs.
- Approaches to prioritizing, planning, and taking action to address healthcare disparities.
- Using data to identify disparities across patient groups.
- Approaches to keep key stakeholders informed of organizational progress toward advancing healthcare equity.
- New Strategies on:
- Vaccination rates
- Childhood asthma
- Perinatal care
Visit the Health Care Equity Accreditation Standards & Resource Center to see the newly added resources from BMC. To continue to learn from other organizations engaged in healthcare equity work, sign up for E-Alerts to be notified when new resources are added to the resource center.
A new search page is now available to easily find Joint Commission-accredited organizations that provide substance use disorder (SUD) treatment and to view the organizations’ levels of care.
Whether it is individuals seeking treatment, providers referring individuals for care, or state authorities or payors seeking information, users can search by organization name or location and filter by:
- Medication availability
- Services offered, specific to the levels of care provided
- State the provider is located
This page provides greater visibility for accredited providers with key stakeholders, including those seeking care, and improves the clarity of information available about the types of services and levels of care they provide. The search page currently displays only accredited SUD providers that have updated their application with their levels of care. If you do not see your organization listed and feel it should be, please update your application or contact your account executive.
View the search page.
Hospitalized patients receive a large amount of medical information from their healthcare team. Patient understanding of medical care reduces readmission rates and improves patient satisfaction, yet the literature suggests that patients often have poor retention of the large amount of care information they received despite numerous interventions.
A new study in the February 2023 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety — “Assessment of Patient Retention of Inpatient Care Information Post-Hospitalization,” by Ryan Townshend, MD, and coauthors — evaluated how well patients retain care information after hospital discharge and assessed patient perspectives on facilitators of this process, such as whiteboards, discussions with providers, discharge paperwork and patient portal.
Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan, conducted semi-structured phone interviews of patients admitted to general medicine resident teaching services within 24 to 48 hours post-hospitalization to assess their recall of four key domains of care:
- Diagnoses addressed
- Inpatient treatment
- Post-discharge treatment plans
- Medication changes
- Chart review verified patient responses which were then categorized by independent reviewers as correct, partially correct or incorrect.
Results showed the vast majority (90%) of patients were confident in their knowledge of their diagnoses and treatment, yet independent review revealed only:
- 58.5% correctly recalled diagnoses addressed
- 64.2% correctly recalled inpatient treatment
- 50.9% correctly recalled post-discharge treatment plans
- 43.4% correctly recalled medication changes
Whiteboards were the most frequently used facilitator (96.2%), yet their content was rated least helpful for retaining care information. Patients suggested several areas for improvement, including prioritizing bedside pen and paper along with updating whiteboards with diagnostic and therapeutic information.
Also featured in the February issue:
- Teamwork Is Associated with Reduced Hospital Staff Burnout at Military Treatment Facilities: Findings from the 2019 Department of Defense Patient Safety Culture Survey (Deloitte Consulting LLP, Arlington, Virginia)
- Providers’ and Patients’ Perspectives on Diagnostic Errors in the Acute Care Setting (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston)
- Practical Applications of Rapid Qualitative Analysis for Operations, Quality Improvement, and Research in Dynamically Changing Hospital Environments (participants from 24 healthcare institutions)
- A New Teaching Tool for Peer Review of Charting and Care in the Emergency Department (Mount Sinai Morningside/West, New York)
- A Free Mobile Application Improves the Efficiency of Hand Hygiene Observation Collection: Experiences at a Pediatric Hospital in South Texas (Driscoll Children’s Hospital, Corpus Christi, Texas)
- Messaging About COVID-19 Safety Measures Is Counterproductive in Cancer Screening Outreach: Results of a Pragmatic Randomized Trial (research letter)
- Evidence-based Messages Are Part of Evidence-Based Medicine: Optimizing Outreach Approaches for Cancer Screenings (editorial)
- The Implementation of a Dedicated Newborn Examination Room: A Quality Improvement Project (research letter)
Access the Journal.
The Joint Commission has an immediate need for Life Safety Code Surveyors who are looking to impact the quality and safety of healthcare at a national level.
For those who have ever thought about joining The Joint Commission’s survey team or wanted to know more about what it takes to be a successful surveyor, The Joint Commission is set to host a virtual Life Safety Code Career Fair at 6 p.m. CT on Feb. 16. Attendees will hear directly from Joint Commission Life Safety Code Surveyors about their typical workday, benefits, and more.
Surveyors can work full time, part time or intermittently depending on their availability — and comprehensive, competitive benefits are available at just a two-week per month commitment.
The ideal Life Safety Code Surveyor will have:
- Eight years of experience in engineering, facilities management, hazardous materials and waste management, emergency preparedness, biomedical equipment, and/or utility systems as well as experience as the organization's safety officer.
- At least five years in a management position.
- Experience with Joint Commission standards and surveys.
- A master’s degree in a related field; at least a bachelor’s is required.
Join the inaugural National Health Equity Grand Rounds event, History of Racism in U.S. Health Care: Root Causes of Today’s Hierarchy and Systems of Power, on Tuesday, Feb. 7. from 2-3:30 p.m. ET.
In addition to highlighting root causes of present-day health inequities, speakers will explore opportunities to advance equity through individual, institutional, and structural solutions. Healthcare professionals may receive no-cost continuing medical education (CME) credit by attending.
The popular PolicySource subscription is now available as an annual e-book for all six of its versions:
- Hospital/Critical Access Hospital
- Ambulatory Care/Office-Based Surgery
- Behavioral Health Care and Human Services
- Home Care
- Laboratory
- Nursing Care Center/Assisted Living Community
Each e-book includes the same great content as the online subscription version, including all existing policies and procedures (P&Ps), tools, and other resources. They also feature:
- New and updated P&Ps that are easy to identify, with redline changes marked in existing P&Ps.
- P&Ps that correlate to Joint Commission requirements that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Purchase a subscription to PolicySource.