A Medical Device Daily

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO; Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois) has implemented a change that will allow healthcare organizations to have continuous access to its Periodic Performance Review (PPR) on the Joint Commission's extranet, JAYCO.

The PPR is an integral component of JCAHO's accreditation process that promotes continuous standards compliance through ongoing, internal monitoring.

The change takes effect this month.

Organizations previously had received access to the PPR tool 15 months after their last triennial survey and had three months to complete it. JCAHO said those timeframes for access have been eliminated.

“Accredited organizations told [us] that continuous access would be beneficial in efforts to promote safe, high-quality care, so the change has been made to meet that need,“ said Linda Murphy-Knoll, vice president of accreditation service operations at JCAHO.

The schedule for completing the Periodic Performance Review remains unchanged until January 2006, when organizations will be expected to update the PPR annually. For 2005, the process requires each accredited organization to conduct a mid-cycle self-assessment against applicable Joint Commission standards; develop a plan of action to address identified areas of non-compliance; and identify measures of success for validating resolution of the identified problem areas.

Under the usual PPR process, organizations will be expected to share that information with JCAHO at the mid-cycle point. Commission staff then works with organizations to refine their plans of action to assure that their corrective efforts are on target.