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The Joint Commission will extend its e-PFI deadline to September 1

Emergency Management Alert, March 27, 2007

In what will be a relief for some accredited healthcare facilities, The Joint Commission will extend a deadline to September 1, 2007, to import certain plans for improvement (PFI) into the new electronic Statement of Conditions (SOC).

The news was relayed to life safety surveyors this week by The Joint Commission in an internal memo, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Other than to confirm that an official announcement is expected by the end of the month regarding the extension, a Joint Commission spokesperson would not offer further details on Thursday.

The prior deadline for this import had been July 1, as the Joint Commission had required facilities to convert paper-based or spreadsheet-based PFIs into the e-SOC if those entries remained unresolved by that date.

The July 1 deadline primarily applied to PFIs from 2006 and earlier. As of January 1, 2007, all new PFI entries must be made electronically through the accreditor's extranet connection.

Interface tool still to come
The September extension allows The Joint Commission to test and release an interface program that will allow facilities to transfer their spreadsheet PFIs into the e-SOC.

Facilities had worried that without the interface tool in place, staff could be faced with manually typing in dozens, or even hundreds, of existing PFI entries into the e-SOC by July 1.

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