Effective Jan. 1, 2025, a fully revised Emergency Management (EM) chapter has been approved for all Joint Commission-accredited nursing care centers. The Joint Commission thoroughly analyzed and rewrote the EM chapter, which resulted in reorganized requirements, renumbered standards, and reduced elements of performance (EPs) by more than 28% for nursing care centers.
The goal of the EM chapter rewrite was to help health care organizations to develop more comprehensive EM programs and to better prepare for the health, safety, and security needs of their facilities, staff, patient and resident populations, and communities during emergencies or disasters (such as a natural disaster, cybersecurity attack, high-consequence infectious disease, or special pathogen).
The new and revised EM requirements clarify and emphasize the following:
- Assessment, applicability, and incorporation of the hazard vulnerability analysis throughout the EM chapter
- Leadership involvement and oversight in all aspects of the EM program
- Staff education and training, with specific guidance for initial and ongoing EM training
The project’s program-specific R³ Report provides rationales for the requirements as well as references to the research articles and reports used to develop them. In addition to an extensive literature review, the new and revised requirements were developed based on voice-of-accredited organization feedback resulting from the pandemic, public field review, expert guidance from a standards review panel, and an internal Joint Commission EM workgroup.
The new and revised requirements will be posted on the Prepublication Standards page of The Joint Commission’s website and will publish online in the fall 2024 E-dition® update to the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Nursing Care Centers (CAMNCC). For those who purchase it, the PDF version of the 2025 CAMNCC will include these new and revised requirements.
For more information, contact the Joint Commission’s Standards and Survey Methods.
Effective Jan. 1, 2025, performance measures for the Advanced Certification in Heart Failure (ACHF) Program will include new measures and the removal of other measures. The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association (AHA) made these changes as a result of feedback from The Joint Commission’s public comment period, a technical advisory panel, and the AHA, the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) 2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA Guideline for the Management of Heart Failure: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines.
ACHF certified organizations will be required to report on the following new performance measures from the AHA’s Get With The Guidelines®—Heart Failure (GWTG–HF) registry:
- AHAHF106: Defect-Free Care for Quadruple Therapy Medication for Patients with Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction (HFrEF)
- AHAHF94: Sodium-Glucose Co-Transporters (SGLT)-2 Inhibitor at Discharge for Patients with HFpEF/HFmrEF (Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction/Heart Failure with Mid-Range Ejection Fraction)
These new measures will be added to the ACHF bundle in the GWTG-HF registry and The Joint Commission’s Certification Measure Information Process (CMIP) tool.
In addition, ACHF certified organizations will not be required to report on ACHF-01: Beta-Blocker Therapy, and all optional outpatient measures will be removed for ACHF only. Performance measures that overlap with the Comprehensive Cardiac Care certification program are still included in that program.
These revisions will publish online in the fall 2024 E-dition® update to the Comprehensive Certification Manual for Disease-Specific Care (DSC). For those who choose to purchase it, the 2025 DSC PDF manual will include these revisions.
For questions related to GWTG measure specifications, contact the AHA at gwtgsupport@heart.org or a site’s local GWTG Program Consultant. Contact The Joint Commission with any other questions related to ACHF performance measures.
These updates will be implemented in the v2025A Specifications Manual and will affect discharges starting Jan. 1, 2025.