JCAHO Challenge

In January of this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services commonly referred to as CMS announced plans to evaluate a new organization to accredit Hospitals. This will be the first time in 40 years that Hospitals will have another option.

The new organization is TUV Healthcare Specialists out of Cincinnati. TUV has consulted for years in hospitals to prepare them for Joint Commission surveys. The impetus for another alternative really began when JCAHO announced it would begin collecting patient-level data from hospitals and sell the information and analyses to third parties.

The idea of selling this information was very alarming to hospitals and certainly questioned the trust of JCAHO. In addition, many hospitals have questioned whether JCAHO standards are really the best way to improve quality care for patients.

TUV has a strategy to link the Medicare survey strategies to ISO 9000 standards. This would be different from JCAHO because their current evaluation does not focus enough on process improvement.

At the present time, there are only JCAHO and the American Osteopathic Organization that can formally accredit hospitals in order for them to receive Medicare funds. JCAHO surveys about 4500 hospitals per year and AOO surveys only about 300 per year.

The monopoly may be on its way out!