Consumers can now check the performance of local hospitals, allowing them to determine the hospital that best suits their needs.
The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits nearly 16,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. An independent, not-for-profit organization, JCAHO is the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Since 1951, JCAHO has developed state-of-the-art, professionally based standards and evaluated the compliance of health care organizations against these benchmarks.
The Joint Commission standards address each organization's level of performance in key functional areas, such as patient rights, patient treatment, and infection control, and the standards focus not simply on an organization's ability to provide safe, high quality care, but on its actual performance as well.
JCAHO's evaluation and accreditation services are provided for the following types of organizations: