The News Room

The Joint Commission has changed its standards to reflect recent meetings with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which gives the Joint Commission its deeming authority to accredit hospitals.

As a result of discussions with CMS, a number of the CMS requirements were considered equivalent to existing Joint Commission elements of performance or were already addressed in the Joint Commission Survey process. Moreover, Joint Commission accredited hospitals are already meeting the essence of many of the revised requirements from CMS. Some of the requirements simply add additional specificity to existing Joint Commission standards, and only a few are entirely new.

The following updated documents are available on the Joint Commission’s website and on the Joint Commission Connect extranet site:

• “Revised 2009 Accreditation Requirements as of March 26, 2009” replaces the file that was posted to the Joint Commission’s website on January 5, 2009. The revised document reflects changes that resulted from discussions between the Joint Commission and CMS.
• “Changes to Accreditation Requirements between January 5 and March 26, 2009 Documents” provides a side-by-side comparison of the January 5 and March 26 documents.

For more information about the standard changes, visit http://www.jointcommission.org/AccreditationPrograms/Hospitals/.