The Joint Commission regularly updates its Health Care Equity Certification Resource Center to help organizations meet the requirements to achieve Health Care Equity Certification. The resource center includes:
- Strategies: Links to resources such as toolkits, templates and guides.
- Spotlights: Brief synopses and videos of successful initiatives and practices to advance health care equity that have been implemented by other healthcare organizations.
Recently added were resources from:
- NorthShore - Edward-Elmhurst Health: Dr. Kimberley Darey, President of Elmhurst Hospital, and Jeff Zakem, System Program Director of Community Impact & Equity with NorthShore - Edward-Elmhurst Health, talk about their system’s efforts to identify and address community health needs, advance health equity, and support local economic growth through newly established Community Investment Funds. These funds support community-based organizations and programs to build capacity and expand community impact in the areas identified through their community health needs assessments and internal health data. Their goal is to use the funds to support efforts to lower barriers to care, address health-related social needs, and ameliorate the root causes of health disparities in their communities.
- Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA): CHA’s Health Improvement Team (HIT) works together with health care providers, residents, community-based organizations, and city leaders to assess health status, determine priorities, build action plans, and provide leadership around health issues that impact the community. The Joint Commission spoke with Doug Kress, CHA’s Chief Community Officer about the partnerships they have developed, and how these strong collaborations have enabled the development of community-based programs that increase access, improve health status outcomes, and respond to the needs of its patient community.
- HealthPartners: HealthPartners has a longstanding focus on health equity with a commitment to improve the health and well-being of each member, patient, and the entire community. HealthPartners collects and analyzes data to help improve care and eliminate disparities. In 2009, they identified a significant disparity in colon cancer screening rates between patients of color and white patients. A project was launched that used the Fecal Immunochemical Test (“FIT kit”) to boost the number of screened patients by enabling patients to send stool samples by mail. They achieved a 25% return rate; screening for patients of color increased from 43% to 67%.
Visit the Health Care Equity Certification Resource Center for more resources. Additionally, the Health Care Equity Accreditation Resource Center provides foundational resources to help healthcare organizations meet The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG), effective July 1, to reduce healthcare disparities. To continue to learn from other organizations engaged in health care equity work, sign up for E-Alerts to be notified when new resources are added to both resource centers.
A free on-demand webinar is now available that introduces each standard and element of performance (EP) of The Joint Commission’s new Health Care Equity (HCE) Certification Program launching July 1 for hospitals and critical access hospitals.
All people deserve access to safe, quality care. This voluntary certification program demonstrates a hospital’s commitment to advancing its efforts to achieve healthcare equity by building upon The Joint Commission’s existing healthcare equity accreditation standards and recent requirements to reduce healthcare disparities.
The webinar will:
- Describe the new HCE Certification requirements and the rationale for them.
- Show participants how to locate and use available resources.
This webinar is approved for 1.0 Continuing Education Credit through July 24. To claim credit, you must:
- Individually register for the webinar.
- Complete the webinar in its entirety.
- Complete a post-program evaluation/attestation. The program evaluation/attestation link will be displayed after the recording finishes playing.
There is still time to give feedback on a Joint Commission field review asking Behavioral Health Care and Human Services (BHC) organizations about their unique experiences with workplace violence to help provide the most evidence-based and relevant requirements. The deadline to submit comments is June 9.
Workplace violence against staff and clients is a growing problem in healthcare. The Joint Commission implemented new requirements for hospitals related to workplace violence in 2022 and is now considering similar requirements for its BHC Accreditation program.
The field review asks for thoughts on the potential new requirements and the larger context of how individual BHC organizations are currently experiencing, preventing, and monitoring workplace violence. It should take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.
This feedback is essential to improving safety and quality for individuals served, visitors, and healthcare workers in the BHC setting. The Joint Commission thanks those who take time to complete the field review, as the comments received will help shape potential new workplace violence requirements.
Despite decades focused on preventing wrong site surgery, it continues to occur at a predictable rate. National Time Out Day, on June 14, brings renewed attention for everyone on the surgical team to pause before a surgical procedure begins to ensure it is the right site, right procedure, and right person.
For this year’s National Time Out Day — on June 14 — the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) and The Joint Commission are focusing on the full attention of all team members during the Time Out. In a joint statement, they stress the importance of and ways to help ensure meaningful, accurate and visible site marking.
“While wrong site surgery is rare, one occurrence is one too many,” stated Haytham Kaafarani, MD, MPH, FACS, chief patient safety officer and medical director, The Joint Commission. “Together, surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, surgical technologists and other members of the surgical team must work together to prevent this type of adverse event. We need to approach every surgical case as if it could be the wrong site surgery one and make every effort from preop to postop to prevent such an adverse event from occurring.”
Read the full statement.
Registration is open for an upcoming free Accelerate PI™ webinar on how to use data to identify disparities across patient groups. The webinar is scheduled for June 22, from 9-10:15 a.m. PT / 10-11:15 a.m. MT / 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. CT / noon-1:15 p.m. ET.
Specifically, the webinar aims to provide an opportunity for senior executives, nursing leaders, quality staff, and data informaticists in the hospital, ambulatory health care, and behavioral health care and human services accreditation programs to learn about stratification of key patient safety and quality measures to examine health care disparities. The tools, resources, and examples are intended to assist organizations on the journey to health care equity, regardless of where they are on the path.
During the webinar, Mat Reidhead, Vice President of Research and Analytics at Missouri Hospital Association, will spotlight a health equity dashboard designed to inform highly targeted quality improvement interventions by hospitals aimed at identifying and eliminating health disparities. Then, Deborah Sisco, Manager of Patient Advocacy and Engagement at University Health, will discuss how her organization uses data to identify disparities across patient groups. Presenters will answer questions during a live Q&A segment during the webinar.
At the end of the session, participants should be able to:
- Recognize how using data to identify disparities can support health care equity standards compliance.
- Describe the role of socio-demographic, social needs, and social determinants of health patient data in identifying differences across patient groups.
- Describe how to analyze at least one quality or safety issue to identify potential health care disparities amongst the organization’s patient population.
This webinar is approved for 1.0 Continuing Education Credit. To claim credit, you must:
- Individually register for the webinar.
- Listen to the live webinar in its entirety. Only those listening live during the session will be eligible to receive credit.
- Complete a post-program evaluation/attestation. The program evaluation/attestation link will be sent to your registered email after the webinar.
The webinar recording and slides will be available at the registration link approximately two hours after the session concludes.
The deadline for accredited acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, and freestanding psychiatric hospitals to submit calendar year (CY) 2022 performance measure data via The Joint Commission’s Direct Data Submission Platform (DDSP) is June 14.
Data must be submitted to meet the ORXY® performance measure requirement for the following types of organizations:
- Organizations required or electing to submit chart-abstracted data must enter and submit CY 2022 data for all four quarters.
- Organizations required or electing to submit electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) must upload, verify, and submit three self-selected quarters.
Organizational staff with access to the DDSP should verify that data is submitted and download the submission report. Organizations can visit the ORYX Performance Measurement Reporting page to review which requirements are applicable to their organization and the list of available measures. For more information, visit The Joint Commission’s Performance Measurement page.
For those who need assistance or have questions regarding the platform, submit a support ticket via the DDSP “Need Help?” button. For non-DDSP questions, contact hcooryx@jointcommission.org and include the organization’s HCO ID in the subject line.