The Joint Commission: An Appropriate Accrediting Body in the Healthcare System

Quality Improvement Essay
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Quality Improvement Essay
Introduction
One of the critical characteristics of high-performing healthcare systems is ensuring quality. Health care access is not enough: when patients and their families enter the healthcare organization – whether a clinic, hospital, or any other medical facility – they should be confident of receiving safe, reliable, and excellent care based on current clinical evidence. This is important for healthcare organizations, where patients are often severely or acutely sick. Hospital accreditation is the cornerstone for guaranteeing basic quality thresholds, at least for issues the healthcare system appraises. Given that patients are increasingly seeking effective and safe care, accreditation, when executed rightly, could constitute a tool to provide the much-sought assurance. This report discusses The Joint Commission (TJC) as the most appropriate accrediting body for my healthcare organization, summarizes the requirements to obtain TJC accreditation, the quality metrics for presentation to TJC regarding a quality improvement project, and how quality performance impacts the organization financially.
Evaluation of The Joint Commission Appropriateness
TJC is an independent and not-for-profit accreditation and standards-setting body in the healthcare system. The body partners with other healthcare stakeholders to enhance healthcare delivery and experiences for the patients, particularly by appraising healthcare entities and spurring their capacity to deliver excellent care and value. It can be deduced that TJC constitutes the ears and eyes for observing healthcare delivery within diverse practice settings (The Joint Commission, 2022b). My organization is a nursing home committed to assisting clients transition from the hospital via rehabilitation to home-based care. The nursing home recognizes TJC’s efforts make the healthcare system safe and highly reliable. Regarding its mission, the healthcare organization is committed to providing excellent care as well as quality outcomes. The organization priorities seeking and maintaining TJC accreditation are to lower readmission rates, enhance processes variability, as well as minimize risks in offering patient-centered care. More importantly, the nurse leaders believe that a collaborative, solutions-centered process would effectively succeed the organization (The Joint Commission, n.d.). In this way, the healthcare organization pursues the TJC accreditation.
Requirements to Obtain Accreditation
There are various eligibility measures that a healthcare organization needs to meet for TJC accreditation. First, the organization should be within the United States (US) and its jurisdictions. If it is outside the US, it should be operated under the US Congress charter or by the US government. Second, the organization should meet the minimum volume of services or inpatients for the facility seeking first-time accreditation. In other words, it should have served ten inpatients within one active during the survey time. Hospitals new to TJC and seeking Medicare Certification should have active inpatient cases during the survey time. If the ...