(The Joint Commission: Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois) -- The Joint Commission’s revised standards, rationales, and elements of performance for 2009 are now available online. The standards will take effect January 1, 2009, giving all health care organizations time to become familiar with the new language, ordering, and numbering. The changes are part of the Standards Improvement Initiative (SII) launched in 2006 as part of The Joint Commission’s quality improvement efforts. SII focuses on clarifying standards language, ensuring that standards are program-specific, deleting redundant and nonessential standards, and consolidating similar standards.

While no new requirements were added, chapter overviews, standards, introductions, rationales, and elements of performance were designed for ease of use. In the standards reorganization, requirements were split or consolidated. Standards have been renumbered and reordered to allow electronic sorting and to allow the addition of new requirements in the future.

“The Standards Improvement Initiative represents The Joint Commission’s continuous commitment to make the standards clear, relevant, and applicable in the specific health care setting in which they are used,” says Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., and president of The Joint Commission. “These changes will better guide health care organizations in providing patients with the best care possible.” A history-tracking report is available online to help organizations see what changes occurred from previous to revised standards. The history tracking allows users to see what happened to each standard, its new number, and how it changed.

The Joint Commission sought extensive input from accredited and nonaccredited health care organizations, advisory groups, payers, purchasers, consumers, governmental agencies, Joint Commission surveyors, and other experts. Online surveys, interviews, meetings, and focus groups were all used to gather comments and suggestions. The Joint Commission will engage in extensive education efforts and discussions in the coming months to assist organizations in understanding the changes. Other important aspects of the Standards Improvement Initiative include:

• Phase I of the SII focused on the accreditation programs for hospitals, critical access hospitals, ambulatory care, office-based surgery, and home care organizations
• SII’s Phase II for behavioral health care, laboratory and long term care accreditation programs began in 2008 and the standards changes will take effect in January 2010. The Accreditation Participation Requirements, Life Safety Code, and Leadership chapters for these programs are online
• Changes in the scoring and decision process will take place January 1, 2009, for all accreditation and certification programs
• Single-user license electronic E-ditions of the manuals will be provided for the first time
• Color-coded tabs in print manuals distinguish standards and requirements from accreditation policies and procedures
• Accreditation program-specific language used in all manuals
• With E-ditions, ability to sort relevant standards and elements of performance applicable to the services provided by an individual organization
• Links from certain EPs to associated requirements in other chapters and
• Standards and EPs related to a focused area of improvement placed in relevant chapters.

Additional details about the revisions are available on the Standards Improvement Initiative web page. For more information, visit www.jointcommission.org/NewsRoom/NewsReleases/nr_sii_gen.htm.