About JCAHO
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations evaluates
and accredits nearly 19,000 health care organizations and programs in
the United States. Since 1951, the Joint Commission has developed state-of-the-art,
professionally-based standards and evaluated the compliance of health
care organizations against these benchmarks.
The mission of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
is "to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided
to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related
services that support performance improvement in health care organizations."
The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits the following types of organizations:
General, psychiatric, children's and rehabilitation hospitals.
Health care networks, including health plans, integrated delivery networks and preferred provider organizations.
Home care organizations, including those that provide home health services, personal care and support services, home infusion and other pharmacy services, durable medical equipment services and hospice services.
Nursing homes and other long term care facilities, including sub-acute care programs, dementia programs and long-term care pharmacies.
Assisted living residencies that provide or coordinate personal services, 24-hour supervision and assistance (scheduled and unscheduled), activities and health-related services.
Behavioral health care organizations, including those that provide mental health, chemical dependency, and mental retardation/ developmental disabilities services for patients of various ages in various organized service settings; and managed behavioral health care organizations.
Ambulatory care providers, including outpatient surgery facilities, rehabilitation centers, infusion centers, group practices and others.
Clinical laboratories.
Accreditation by the Joint Commission is recognized nationwide as a symbol
of quality that indicates an organization meets certain performance
standards.
More information about the Joint Commission can be found at www.jcaho.org
RESOURCES
The JCAHO standards offer a system-wide approach to
accreditation, which encompasses the accreditation accomplishments of
all health delivery organizations within your managed care network.
Our in-depth understanding of diverse managed care structures, and our
experience with multiple types of standards and accrediting bodies,
makes us uniquely qualified to support your needs. One of your first
steps in preparing for a survey is to complete an inventory of the health
delivery organizations in the network. These are called components by
JCAHO. (Click here for our component inventory worksheet)
Our Services
Syntro offers a menu of services and tools, which are adapted to fit
your needs. After understanding your objectives and internal resources,
we assess your organization's needs and help you determine areas currently
in compliance, as well as gaps with each standard requirement.
The Assessment
Your assessment includes reviewing key plan documents, evaluating core
processes, auditing files and interviewing staff responsible for managing
and implementing standards. We complete the initial assessment using
the version of JCAHO materials that you will be accredited under.
If desired, you may request an assessment against multiple sets of standards,
for example, Medicaid and Medicare regulations, JCAHO and URAC.
Establish Priorities
The assessment results help you establish priorities and determine areas
needing the highest degree of focus. You receive from us an action plan
for the gaps, written in a project-plan format that you can use for
management. We help you work through the variables necessary in setting
the priorities that are right for your organization.
Develop a Plan
Your action plan serves as the basis for developing a full plan for
implementation of the standards and/or survey preparation. The plan
is a living document that you update and modify.
Tools and Templates
You may desire other resources that make implementation and survey preparation
easy and minimize struggle and stress. Our tools library
(click here
to review) provides tools to help guide implementation as well as sample
program documents, and policy and procedure templates. We have done
the research, analysis, and organized information into easy-to-use guidelines
and templates, saving you many hours of time and money. These tools
are based on years of experience in the field and as surveyors.
Other Services
We tailor our services to match the needs and desires of the organization.
Services can range from an initial evaluation and report, to quarterly
site visits with intermittent conference calls and off-site document
review, to onsite project management. (click here to access information
on Syntro consulting services).
