Improving accreditation
By Beverly Kirchner, RN, BSN, CNOR, CASC
As a developer and manager of ambulatory surgery centers, I strongly advocate for every ambulatory care center becoming accredited and following standards to ensure patient and worker safety and quality of care. Accreditation standards are our tool to make sure our work is reviewed and meets practice standards in order to provide safe, healthful environments for our patients to undergo surgical procedures.
Currently, there are close to 1,000 standards and regulations from state, federal and other regulatory agencies that we have to meet inside a free-standing surgery center, and each standard has implications for the way we provide patient care. That is why I am participating as an accredited user in The Joint Commission's Standards Improvement Initiative project to offer content and help revise current standards and elements of performance. The goal is to make them more logical, user-friendly and appropriate to ensure patient safety.
As an accredited user group for ambulatory care, we come together in person and through conference calls to discuss each chapter of The Joint Commission's Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Ambulatory Care and provide recommended changes. Through this work we are noting redundancies, standards that apply more to specific ambulatory settings and areas where formatting and references need to be clearer. We also are sharing our views on standards and elements of performance that we believe amount to little more than time-consuming exercises, rather than performance standards that truly would benefit the safety of our patients.
By providing this information to The Joint Commission, we are doing our part to make sure that the standards we base our care on are clear, easy to follow and applicable to our centers. We also hope our recommendations will serve to create a clearer manual for surveyors to review our sites and ensure our continued accreditation.
When the new standards are released in 2009, managers will need to spend time reviewing their program manuals and revising their practice. However, final revisions will make the process of following Joint Commission standards more user-friendly and make it easier to track information, which will lead to more positive outcomes for improved quality.
While standards for every healthcare environment are important, revising standards for ambulatory care settings is essential because so many patients turn to us for care and we need to make sure we are asked to follow accreditation standards—a check-and-balance mechanism that allows us to maintain our reputation and provide the highest possible level of care.
The Joint Commission's Standards Improvement Initiative project gives every healthcare provider a unique opportunity to provide input in order to improve the accreditation standards we live by. I encourage every healthcare professional to review draft chapters for each program manual as they are posted and share their thoughts and experience on areas for improvement.
Kirchner, a member of AORN's board of directors, began her career as a labor and delivery staff nurse at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and changed her career focus to OR nursing in 1979. Since 1985, she has worked as a consultant on construction and management of surgery centers in multiple states and currently is owner and an officer of Genesee Associates, Inc. Kirchner is recognized nationally for her work and contributions to ambulatory surgery management, consulting and service to the healthcare environment.