Nursing

Top 10 most-cited Joint Commission standards

Nurse Leader Insider, August 6, 2015

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For the last several years, The Joint Commission's semiannual list of the most-cited standards has read like a scene from Groundhog Day. Essentially, the same 10 standards are cited over and over; Environment of Care (EC) and Life Safety (LS) issues routinely top the list, while a couple of other standards rotate in and out.

"The thing to keep in mind is the top 10 is heavily influenced by the fact that engineers were introduced to the environmental assessment," says Kate Fenner, managing director of Compass Clinical Consulting. "EC and LS are covered by one dedicated person whose sole focus is to survey these standards, where physician and nurse surveyors have 1,800+ standards to hit."
 
Rarely discussed, however, are the troublesome standards that may not receive as much attention because they fall outside the top 10. These include:

  • Patient rights
  • Infection control
  • Behavioral health issues
  • Dialysis services


Patient rights and infection control are two areas that surveyors are focusing on and scoring as condition-level deficiencies, says Sena Blickenstaff, principal with Blickenstaff Clinical Consulting.

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