Joint Commission International – Meeting All the Standards of Health Care and Safety

Joint Commission International Mission Statement: To continuously develop and improve the standardized health care and facilitation for the public, in collaboration with other participants, by assessing health care systems and inspiring them to stand out in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission is the world’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. It was founded by defining as a Patient Safety Solution system design or intervention that will demonstrate the ability to prevent or mitigate patient harm stemming from the processes of health care.

An Overview of Joint Commission International Accreditation Standards for the Quality Assessment of Health Care Systems

Joint commission international’s commitment towards serving the humanity is offering services beyond par excellence. Their accreditation program is more than its standards, impeccable surveying process, scoring method, decision process and the standard interpretation policies made JCI a symbol of public health and safety.

The accreditation and certification program of Joint Commission international is designed to meet all the requirements whether they are social, political or economical. JCI is actively working in the countries where legislation has been enacted aiming to improve the health services and manage their cost.

The Joint commission international accreditation and certification program evaluates the capability of an entire health organization to produce good results. The evaluation consists of full range of functions and systems including:

· Prevention of patient care hand-over errors

· Prevention of wrong site/wrong procedure/wrong person surgical errors

· Prevention of continuity of medication errors

· Prevention of high concentration drug errors

· Promotion of effective hand hygiene practices

Joint Commission International – A Symbol of Health Care Globally

JCI is offering consultation to worldwide organizations having the diverse medical cultures in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America. Joint commission international services include:

• Development of a quality evaluation system according to the specific needs on national or regional basis.

• Development of a program to prepare an organization for accreditation and certification process.

• Development and advancement of operations like management, clinical technology / functions, facility planning and implementation criteria.

• Continuous performance measurement and development of a cycled quality improvement program.

• Quality and safety improvement, including engineering safety and health design, infection control and prevention, medication management and patient safety.

Benefits of Joint Commission International Accreditation and Certification

Joint commission international accreditation was launched in 1999 to provide standards and expectations for hospitals. The standards given are made for international use and designed to help international patients to decide if the hospitals are trustable or not.

• Joint commission international is pioneer in providing education on good practices to improve and manage clinical and business processes.

• JCI focuses on risk management criteria to reduce the risk factor down to level zero.

• JCI is standards based upon quality and safety of health is gaining confidence worldwide.

• JCI is the hub of highly trained professionals like clinicians and advocates who practice the top evaluation methods to maintain highest standards of patient’s safety.

• JCI organize worldwide events with medi-care professionals to develop the strict and valued safety standards.

• JCI accreditation and certification decisions are made by a nominated international committee of health care experts.

• JCI advisory councils include the world health care leaders from Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, who continuously monitors key patient safety and quality issues.

Trends and Conclusions

Joint commission international’s global experience till date points to a common desire among countries for improved access and quality with the better management of health care costs. The system stakeholders are demanding more accountability and better trained professionals. Country health care systems are looking to other countries for clinical practice guidelines and other tools to promote the practice of evidence based medicine, implying opportunities for international knowledge exchange and the potential for increasing consistency in the practice of medicine and overall health care delivery. The growing interest in the development and use of viable and valid indicators (performance measures) will lead to a need for internationally comparable data. The rapidly increasing use of technology has the potential to support all the theses trends.

1. Identify Current Regional/ International Safety Problems and Solutions Available

2. Understand Regional/ International Barriers to Solutions

3. Assess Risk of Solutions

4. Adapt Solutions to Regional/ International needs

5. Develop Disseminate Solutions

Accreditation with its ‘systems’ approach, quality monitoring and management framework, and the total organization evaluation, could serve as the best tool to facilitate the convergence of the strengths of a variety of quality evaluation models into a common, multipurpose model. However, we agree that further descriptive research must be done to facilitate convergence. A common model for evaluation for health care organizations could better serve the European Union, as well as the other regions of the world, in the movement toward harmonizing improvement in health care delivery.