Joint Commission Sucks Again
A new study in “The BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal, also found no evidence that patients who select a hospital accredited by the Joint Commission obtain any health-care benefits over hospitals reviewed by other accrediting organizations.” It’s time to shut these bastards down.
Last year the Wall Street Journal investigated them and you can see my take on it here. I wasn’t the only one to notice this charade that the WSJ outed:
- The Harvard report comes amid mounting federal oversight of, and congressional investigations into, the hospital-accreditation system following a report last year in The Wall Street Journal that found that problem-plagued facilities routinely kept their Joint Commission accreditation.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, or CMS, this month announced increased oversight of accreditors, citing the Journal report. The agency is launching a pilot program that could lead to changes in the way accreditors’ performances are reviewed, and officials said they’re likely to propose new federal regulations this fall.
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee in March launched an investigation into the organizations following the Journal report. Separately, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) asked CMS to outline how federal law could be changed to make accreditors’ inspections reports public. The commission currently now keeps its detailed inspection reports private and has opposed efforts to make them widely available.
Say what you will about this administration (I do not want to get into a political fight here) but they have clamped down on some BS going on in the healthcare system. You can see prior posts on this blog for more proof.
My issue with the Joint Commission has always been proof. They would scare everyone at a hospital to make ridiculous changes that were unproven. An unopened diet coke at the nurses station? Ding. Christmas cards on a doctor’s door? Ding. We base what we do in medicine on some studies that show it works. These jerks pranced around like the Gestapo without anyone questioning them, other than me. And guess what? They suck.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
I’ve never seen a patient sitting or lying next to, on, or under the desk where I sit and create mouse clicks until my finger is numb…so how is that a “patient care area?!?!” They can have my drink when they pry it from my cold dead fingers….
Let’s not forget the GINORMOUS amount of $$$$ that go into preparing for that damn survey! And what Joint Commission says, goes in my hospital. Latest fight we (the docs) are fighting– that ER “holding orders” expire in 4 hrs and RNs are not allowed to accept verbal “admitting orders”. So when Mrs. Smith gets admitted at 1am for pneumonia, stable but can’t go home, I am now expected to get up, find my computer, spend 7 minutes just logging in (if I can) and enter orders. Previously, the ER doc would write some basic orders and I would see the patient in the morning. If the floor nurse needed something else, she called me and I gave them over the phone, hopefully keeping my eyes closed so I could go back to sleep– 2 minutes tops and I was done. SHOW ME HOW THIS IS A DANGER!
So, the solution to fixing the ineffective system of hospital accreditation is to pile federal government-run oversight on top of it? What could go wrong???
From the same folks that brought us the pain scale from Perdue pharmaceutical. They should be held liable for the narcotics problem. We predicted that when the Joint insisted
Preach, brother, preach…..
Big government always thinks that more big government is the answer…. especially to corruption and mediocrity that it creates in the first place.