The Joint Commission's revised medical staff standards, which became effective Jan. 1, reflect the reality that credentialing and privileging is "really the single most important activity that an organization can do to ensure there are quality practitioners," according to John Herringer, associate director of standards interpretation for The Joint Commission, based in Oakbrook Terrace, IL.
The traditional "bad apple" approach to peer review is changing to a new emphasis on performance improvement, says Nancy J. Auer, MD, FACEP, chief medical officer of Seattle-based Swedish Health Services.
Data for every practitioner, analyzed frequently, with the right people in the loop you'll need to develop systems to ensure that all of these things happen on an ongoing basis, in order to comply with new medical staff standards from The Joint Commission.
Physician peer review has been an essential part of hospital quality since the American College of Surgeons first established minimum hospital standards in 1918. To this day an effective peer review process continues to be important.
Almost half of hospital staff report there is room for improvement in the area of handoffs and transitions across units, according to the 2007 Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture Comparative Database Report released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
