CMS’ State Operations Manual, Appendix A, offers interpretive guidelines for its own state surveyors and generally has been held as the guide for all the accrediting bodies. It outlines the tasks that accompany the survey process for hospitals, from off-site survey preparation to post-...
Effective immediately, CMS says texting of patient information and of patient orders is permissible—with some caveats. In a memo to CMS state survey agency directors on February 8, CMS noted that due to technological advances in encryption and more secure interfaces between information...
The Accreditation Commission for Health Care’s (ACHC) recent Quality Review Edition of its publication TheSurveyor for acute care hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAH) examined the most...
Almost 90% of hospitals surveyed by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023, were cited for deficiencies under one of the accrediting organization’s main infection prevention and control (IPC) standards.
If you have reason to believe your hospital may be subject to a complaint investigation by your accrediting organization (AO) or CMS, the best strategy is to be prepared with documentation, including evidence of how the patient safety problem was handled and what, if any, corrective measures...
Ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) are being reminded of the importance of having complete documentation in patients’ medical records.
With the advent of side-by-side validation surveys, healthcare accreditation leaders have quickly realized that they need to be thoroughly prepared for all types of surveys every day, now more than ever.
Happy one-year anniversary of The Joint Commission’s move to update its time frame for evaluating licensed practitioners’ ability to provide care, treatment, and services from two years to three years. Although healthcare facilities do not have to make the change, many are. And it’s been a year...
Continuous readiness, including a mock survey approach that fully integrates the tracer methodology, is a good way to take a snapshot of the organization’s compliance, remind staff of the survey process so that they maintain a comfort level should an unannounced survey occur, and work on...
In this Q&A session, we delve into the intricate world of healthcare accreditation with Kurt Patton, MS, RPh, founder and president emeritus of Patton Healthcare Consulting. With a rich history at The Joint Commission (TJC), including a tenure as executive director of...
