Please see Attachment to get a better understanding of Assignment. Class: Health Data Management Assignment: Are We Ready for Joint Commission Ensuring that an organization is ready for an accreditati
Week 9_Assignment, Rubric, & Lesson Content Part 2
Class: Health Data Management
Assignment: Are We Ready for Joint Commission
Ensuring that an organization is ready for an accreditation, licensing and/or certification is an on-going process not a one-time activity. It can be beneficial to utilize tools in order to define the process to ensure compliance with standards and guidelines and to gain commitment from the stakeholders by involving them in the process with specific responsibilities relating to their organizational areas and areas of expertise. There are two parts to this assignment to prepare a hospital for a Joint Commission Accreditation Survey. Note that although this is for Joint Commission a similar process can be used to prepare for a licensing survey or other accrediting body.
Open the document titled “Accreditation Survey Activity Guide for Health Care Organizations” by clicking on the link below. Review the document to become familiar with the areas that a hospital would need to assess in order to ensure organization wide readiness for a Joint Commission Accreditation Survey.
For this assignment you will review the section on Leadership and Data Use, page 85.
Based on the information provided in this section of the areas that the surveyor will review with leadership at the time of the survey, create an assessment document that you would have used to perform the organizational assessment for each of the eight areas in the Leadership and Data Use Overview. Include what information/reports you would have required and from which stakeholders. This can be done in a table or spreadsheet (see example below). See the list of possible leadership stakeholders below.
| Topic | Stakeholder | Activity for Preparation | Outcome |
| Monitoring Performance of Contracted Services | -Vice President of |
| Report on contractor performance and recommendations to continue or cancel. |
Accreditation Survey Activity Guide for Health Care Organizations
If the above link will not open by clicking on it, please copy & paste to the hyperlink below into web browser to open.
https://content.learntoday.info/Learn/HI435_Summer_12/site/Media/Joint%20Commission%20Survey%20Activity%20Guide%20%20for%20Healthcare%20Organizations%202014.pdf
Open the document title “Checklist for Joint Commission Preparation Readiness” by clicking on the link below. This document includes a checklist of activities to prepare the organization for survey immediately before the survey team arrives. Reorganize the checklist in a table or spreadsheet format to identify and assign specific responsibility for each activity, supporting what needs to be done. Utilize the list of leadership positions below and your knowledge of hospital organization. It would be leadership’s responsibility to assign the tasks to those Directors under their area of responsibility.
Example
| Preparation Activity | Responsible Leader | What Needs to Be Done |
| No patient names are easily visible | Vice President of Nursing (Charge Nurse for each unit and ED | Check all patient rooms and nursing stations to be patient names are not visible to visitors |
Checklist for Joint Commission Preparation Readiness
If the above link will not open by clicking on it, please copy & paste to the hyperlink below into web browser to open.
https://content.learntoday.info/Learn/HI435_Summer_12/site/Media/JointCommissionPreparationCheck%20List.pdf
CEO
Vice President of Operations (includes all operational areas in the hospital including Environmental, Clinical and Nursing – the VP’s for these areas report to the VP of Operations
Vice President of Finance (Director of HIM)
Vice President of Nursing
Vice President of Clinical Services
Vice President of Medical Affairs
President of the Medical Staff
Vice President for Performance Improvement
Vice President of Environmental Affairs
Senior Director of Risk Management
Submit your completed assignment by following the directions linked below. Please check the Course Calendar for specific due dates.
Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document.
Rubric:
Tips: Also, this week we are learning how to get ready for an accreditation survey. This can be a very stressful event for any healthcare facility. However, the key is not to get ready when you have a survey coming, but to stay ready at all times. In your assignment this week, you are creating tables to help the facility get ready for Joint Commission.
In part 1, you are given an article to read. Go through this article to get an overall feel of what to expect during the survey. Pay particular attention to page 85 as this is the information you will need to complete your first table. On page 85, you are given topics that the surveyor will want to discuss. Your job is to create a table that will include the topics to be discussed, the stakeholder, the activity for preparation, and the outcome. Follow the example table given in the directions.
In part 2, you are given a checklist for Joint Commission Preparations. Go through the checklist and create a table of each preparation activity, the responsible leader, and what should be done for each activity. Your table should look like the example within the assignment directions.
Scoring Rubric:
| Criteria | Points |
| Created a table of topics to be discussed with surveyor. Included the stakeholder, activity for preparation, and outcome | 10 |
| Created a checklist table. Included the responsible leader and what should be done for each activity. | 10 |
| Total | 20 |
Lesson Content:
Why Accreditation for Health Care?
Accreditation for health care means a hospital has met the standards for care that are pre-established not only for the safety of the patient but also for the quality care for a patient. Hospitals take pride in passing surveys and being compared to other facilities, and they post their accreditation certificate in the lobby or entrance way of a hospital. There are many organizations that hospitals can participate in to receive accreditation, for example, the Joint Commission, Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP), and the Commission on Accreditation for Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). Hospitals must pay the fee in order to participate and receive the accreditation. This survey is an on-site survey that will take place unannounced and lasts between 3-5 days. Also state health departments review hospitals to grant their licenses according to state rules and laws.
Many of us have read shocking newspapers stories about health care facilities and what has happened to the patients they serve. For example, a hospital in the Southeast had received the highest accreditation possible, and the next week, a surgeon amputated the wrong limb on a patient. We ask ourselves, "how does this happen? I thought they gave good care." Because of wrong site surgeries, a universal protocol for surgeries was put in place. This process eliminates the wrong site, the wrong limb, and the wrong person. A patient is asked to mark the limb that surgery will need to be performed on. A patient is asked their name and birth date prior to any procedure being done, and a time out is called prior to the beginning of the surgery by the nursing staff to make sure everything is in place. This type of process is reviewed today in hospitals under going a survey by different accrediting bodies.
We also hear stories about copies of medical records being found in a garbage can.How can this occur? This story could have many endings - the patient dropped his copies when he was leaving the hospital or he did not like what he read and he threw it away. Again, hospital policies in the past were not strong enough to protect patient confidentiality, and a good paper shredding process was not in place in some of our hospitals. Confidentiality is reviewed by surveyors to make sure the patient's privacy is protected.
The average patient in a hospital may not be acutely aware of how important it is for the hospital they are seeking care from to be accredited, but they are aware how important it is to them to have gotten good quality and safe care while they were in the hospital. It is everyone's job that works in the hospital to be aware of the importance of accreditation.
