What is JCI Accreditation?
The Joint Commission, formerly known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and still known more commonly by the acronym, JCAHO, is an independent, not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 healthcare organizations in the United States. It was founded in 1951.
JCAHO’s Joint Commission International (JCI) was founded in the late 1990s to survey hospitals outside of the United States. JCI, which is also not-for-profit, currently accredits facilities in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. A January 2008 press release says that since 1999, JCI has accredited more than 140 hospitals in 27 countries.
As one would assume, the standards of international assessment are not the same as standards for facilities within the United States. A 2007 interview with Karen Timmons, President and CEO of Joint Commission International, posted on MedTripInfo.com, quoted Timmons as saying, “We determined that the existing Joint Commission standards should not be used, and developed a set of international standards that could be applied to various health care systems and that would be sensitive to unique cultural issues. … (W)e feel that our standards are comparable, but different.”
Information about the accreditation process, and international standards for different types of facilities are available on the JCI website. The JCI says the average cost in 2008 for an accreditation survey of a hospital was anticipated about US$41,000.
Other groups that fulfill a similar role in international accreditation are:
- Accreditation Canada (formerly the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA))
- The Trent Accreditation Scheme (TAS) (United Kingdom)
- The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS)
