The Joint Commission Reveals New Areas of Field Review and More...

The Joint Commission has several areas that are currently in the process of field review:

• Proposed National Patient Safety Goals addressing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI).
• Start Date:  December 2, 2010
• End Date:  January 27, 2011
• Proposed revisions to credentialing and privileging requirements for the Long Term Care accreditation program
• Start Date:  December 2, 2010
• End Date:  January 17, 2011
• Proposed requirements for advanced heart failure certification
• Start Date:  November 3, 2010
• End Date:  December 15, 2011

To participate in any current field reviews, visit the Joint Commission Web site at http://www.jointcommission.org/Standards/FieldReviews.

The Joint Commission also has the following areas currently in development:

STANDARDS AND GOALS

• Proposed revision to the National Patient Safety Goal on medication reconciliation for the ambulatory care, behavioral health care, critical access hospital, home care, hospital, long term care, Medicare/Medicaid certification-based long term care, and office-based surgery programs.
• Proposed applicability changes to urgent care requirements in the ambulatory care program.
• Proposed 2012 National Patient Safety Goals pertaining to health-care associated infections for the hospital and long term care programs.
• Proposed standards for the "Primary Care Home" initiative in the ambulatory care program.
• Proposed clarifications and applicability changes to the home health standards in the home care program.
• Proposed standards to encompass the continuum of care provided to heart failure patients in a variety of health care delivery settings in the disease-specific care program for Heart Failure Advanced Certification.
• Development of a model to integrate performance expectations on accountability measures into a standards requirement for the hospital accreditation program.  The tentative implementation date for a new requirement is January 2012.

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

• Proposed revisions to the Sentinel Event Policy for all programs. 

For more information on any or all of the forthcoming changes, please visit the The Joint Commission site at http://www.jointcommission.org.