CMS-Related Requirements Reduced

• 3/26/2009
• Author: Janet Pimentel
• Category: The Source Blog
• 30458 Views
• 2 Comments
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Good news for accredited hospitals that use Joint Commission accreditation for deemed status! The Joint Commission has been able to significantly reduce the number of new and revised standards and elements of performance as part of its hospital deeming application to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Back in January 2009, The Joint Commission posted 165 new and revised requirements on its Web site to give customers a peek at an early draft of those CMS-related requirements. Now the number of the requirements has been shaved down to 87--meaning that a little more than half of the original requirements are gone! The significant reduction was possible because The Joint Commission had numerous discussions with CMS over the last few weeks and pointed out that many of the requirements were equivalent to existing elements of performance or were already addressed in The Joint Commission survey process.

I encourage you to look over the slimmed-down requirements by going to The Joint Commission’s Web site at http://www.jointcommission.org. (The information will also be available through The Joint Commission Connect™.) I took a look at the latest information and was especially pleased to find a side-by-side comparison document of the differences between the CMS-related standards and EPs posted in January and now. This document is very user friendly and will help you see the differences quickly. I also noticed that no new requirements have been added since January.

Hospitals can expect to receive a hard copy of the CMS-related requirements as part of the 2009 Update 1 planned for the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH). Update 1 will arrive to you in June, instead of March as in previous years, because we need time to prepare the information for you. As the Executive Editor for the Accreditation and Certification products, I can assure you that we have been planning and working continuously to make sure the 2009 Update 1 will contain all the CMS-related information that you need. (In case you were wondering, the E-dition for hospitals will also have these 87 requirements included in its electronic version for customers in late June/early July. E-dition also needs time to input the information in its database and test it before it’s ready for customers.)

If your hospital happens to have a survey conducted between April 6 and June 30, you can expect the surveyor to evaluate compliance with these requirements, but your accreditation decision will not be affected. Starting on July 1, 2009, your hospital will be expected to comply with these requirements. CMS’ final decision regarding the deeming application is expected to be made later this year, and that means there may be further changes to the standards based on that decision. But we’ll provide you with more information if and when that happens.

If you have any questions in the meantime about the requirements, do what I do and contact The Joint Commission’s Standards Interpretation Group at 1-630-792-5900.

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