(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.

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