Unraveling the Intricate System of the Joint Commission - Coursework Example

Unraveling The Intricate System of the Joint Commission Introduction Healthcare s are benefiting much from health campaigns launched by various entities endorsing healthy living lifestyles. These institutions are gaining more and more customers by the day. Organizations now require medical examinations before deciding to hire new staff. Also, regular medical check-ups help maintain the physical fitness of workers and guarantee that work flow will not be derailed due to health reasons. The healthcare profession should be conscientious enough to provide high quality service. To ensure such quality, the Joint Commission has been established. This paper shall attempt a systems approach in unraveling the Joint Commission’s organization. Organisation The Joint Commission is “an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. Joint Commission accreditation and certification is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to meeting certain performance standards. “ (from Joint Commission website). Its mission is to “continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. “ (Joint Commission website). The Joint Commission provides the premium standards that health care institutions must comply with to ensure that patients are provided the utmost quality of care they deserve. Upon successfully passing the accreditation requirements, the health care organization earns the symbol of quality that reflects the organization’s commitment to excellence – the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval. To maintain it, the organization should undergo on-site surveys conducted by a Joint Commission survey team at least every three years. From this, it can be said that the open system of give and take between the organization’s internal and external environments are efficiently working to provide quality health services to their main stakeholder, which is the general public. Context and setting The Joint Commission is a renowned organization that has grown to include wide individual and corporate memberships. It has become a complex system comprised of many inter-related parts. It is governed by a 29-member Board of Commissioners including physicians, administrators, nurses, employers, a labor representative, health plan leaders, quality experts, ethicists, a consumer advocate and educators. The wide diversity of experiences of the commissioners enriches health care with their professional backgrounds and are a rich source of input for the system’s knowledge resource. The corporate membership likewise enjoys an esteemed group of organizations such as the American College of Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, the American Dental Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Medical Association. “The Joint Commission employs approximately 1,000 people in its surveyor force, at its central office in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, and at a satellite office in Washington, D.C. The Washington office is the Joint Commission’s primary interface with government agencies and with Congress, seeking and maintaining partnerships with the government that will improve the quality of health care for all Americans, and working with Congress on legislation involving the quality and safety of health care.” (Joint Commission website) Systems definition and analysis The Joint Commission’s Open system comes closest to Koontz and Weirich’s (1988) definition of a systemized organization: “An organized enterprise does not, of course, exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is dependent on its external environment; it is a part of larger systems such as the industry to which it belongs, the economic system, and society. Thus, the enterprise receives inputs, transforms them, and exports the outputs to the environment” (p12). The transformation processes within its internal environment greatly affects the external environment, which are the healthcare institutions under its ambit. The brand of quality represented by being accredited by the Joint Commission has now spread worldwide as it now accredits quality hospitals in different countries. From the foregoing, it can be assumed that the Joint Commission wields much power and influence in the health care industry. The Joint Commission system includes varied organizations and individuals that may network with each other in the name of quality health care. It commits to the following mission: Continually enhancing the value of its accreditation and certification programs Developing, utilizing and maintaining valid and reliable performance measures. Ensuring that the accreditation process is publicly accountable Making patient safety an imperative in all accredited organizations. Addressing pressing public policy issues that impact the quality and safety of health care. Specifically, the Joint Commission checks if the organization’s level of performance is at par with theirs. Key functional areas such as patient rights, patient treatment and infection control are surveyed. On top of provision of safe, high quality care, the Joint Commission also looks into the organization’s actual performance. Usually, the patients’ satisfaction in the service they were provided speaks for itself. The Joint Commission develops its standards by consulting with health care experts, providers, measurement experts, purchasers, and consumers. Health care institutions earning the approval of the Joint Commission enjoy numerous benefits and rewards to their upholding of high standards of quality. Since the Joint Commission publicly endorses their accredited organizations, this strengthens the community’s confidence in the quality and safety of care, treatment and service it derives from the accredited institutions. This also provides a competitive edge and keeps the institution on guard in maintaining its esteemed status. Accreditation and certification by the Joint Commission improves risk management and risk reduction in health care service-providers. The Joint commission also provides education on good practices to improve the organization’s business operations. Aside from that, it provides professional advise and counsel to the administration and staff of the organizations thereby enhancing staff recruitment and development. Select insurers and other third parties recognize only institutions accredited by the Joint Commission, and such accreditation may fulfill regulatory requirements in select states. It is no wonder that any thriving health care institution goes after a Joint Commission accreditation and certification to be able to reach a privileged status. Issues The Joint Commission attracts a multitude of deserving health care organizations, but this is not to say these are immune from organizational problems. Joint Commission exerts efforts to straighten out issues by helping out its accredited members in need. It stops and gives meticulous attention to it and carefully unravels problematic causes so it can continue to co-exist harmoniously. One common problem encountered by accredited healthcare institutions is dealing with patients who have low health literacy. Since one of the Joint Commission’s accreditation standards emphasize the fundamental right and need for patients to receive information about their care in a way that they can understand, it becomes a challenge for health care professionals if patients have difficulty understanding, or worse, refuse to understand procedures needed to be done to them for the welfare of their own health. “Health literacy issues, which have largely gone unrecognized and unaddressed in the healthcare system, undermine the ability of healthcare organizations to comply with accreditation standards and safety goals meant to protect the safety of patients. The safety of patients cannot be assured without mitigating the negative effects of low health literacy and ineffective communications on patient care.” (Murphy-Knoll, 2007, p.206). Patients with low literacy, or non-English speakers run the risk of miscommunication and may endanger themselves if they do not follow the correct procedure, dosage or schedule of treatment advised by the healthcare professional. Addressing health literacy issues must be shared by healthcare service providers, healthcare policymakers, purchasers and payers, regulatory bodies and consumers themselves. In consultation with these stakeholders, the commission has aimed at improving communications by identifying the “need to develop organizational cultures that place high priority on culturally competent and safe environments in which clear communications are intrinsic to all care processes and interactions.” (Murphy-Knoll, 2007, p. 206). Communication breakdowns are not limited to patient encounters. Even between the healthcare professionals and workers within the same institution , a lot of miscommunication takes place. Transferring information about a patient has inherent gaps that may be vulnerable to misinterpretation that may spell devastating effects. Strategies for managing issues For this specific problem, to improve health literacy and patient safety, three broad strategies were recommended by the Joint Commission. One is to “make effective communications an organizational priority to protect the safety of patients.” (Murphy-Knoll, 2007, p. 206). This calls for intensive training of staff to assist patients in the best possible way they can using clear communication. A commitment to uncovering how communication issues ensue to affect patient safety, healthcare disparities and access to care must be strengthened. The second strategy is to “address patients’ communication needs across the continuum of care” (p. 207) from the time a patient checks in the healthcare institution until he is sent home. This means that the healthcare professionals ensure that the patients’ understanding of all procedures related to their health must be clearly delivered, using plain language to describe his/her condition and providing him/her with self-management instructions that meet his/her learning and language needs. “Handoff” communication between the healthcare professionals and workers must be standardized along with effective communication skills to ensure patient safety. The last strategy is to “pursue policy changes that promote improved provider-patient communications such as referring patients with low literacy to adult learning centers and even assisting them with enrollment procedures.” (p. 207). Being patient-centered means respecting the culture they come from, and healthcare professionals must likewise strive to learn the different culture and even common language expressions of their international patients for better communication with them. Dialogue is defined as “a sustained collective inquiry into the processes, assumptions and certainties that compose everyday experience.” (Isaacs, n.d.). In the organizational setting, dialogues are used to have a “meeting of minds”, extracting what each member believes and coming up with an agreed decision that takes into account those beliefs. Members think together, analyzing causes and effects, and end up understanding a shared meaning. Usually, they reach greater heights in idea-storming that as individuals, they could not have thought of. This is contrasted with the construct of consensus building wherein people “seek some rational means to limit options and focus on the ones that are logically acceptable to most people.” (Isaacs, n.d.). Richmond & McCroskey (2005) defines organizational communication as “the process by which individuals stimulate meaning in the minds of other individuals by means of verbal or nonverbal messages in the context of a formal organization.” One example is standardizing “handoff procedures” or transfer of information from one “hand” to another. The Joint Commission, being the central figure in the healthcare web must be consistent in communicating to each accredited organization its philosophy of providing the best quality health care and treatment through collaborative efforts of professionals from different disciplines. Each healthcare worker should be able to feel that he is part of a great team that sets high goals and successfully attains them. “Creating the conditions that engender knowledge transfer entails significant structural and cultural changes by top leadership, which will require leaders to be convinced that the benefits of knowledge transfer outweigh the costs. In the absence of this commitment, it is unlikely that attempts to increase knowledge flow will succeed. In order to succeed working as a team, organizations must be aware of relational power, or the give and take of power and knowledge. Hence, this would involve knowledge transfer from individuals who possess it to those who do not. In healthcare institutions, this may be in the way of sharing expertise in various disciplines which must be transferred and shared among units. Indeed, companies that are more effective at knowledge transfer have been shown to have a greater likelihood of organizational survival and higher levels of productivity (Dart et al., 1995; Dyer & Nobeoka, 2000; Galbraith, 1990). The Joint Commission has its ways of monitoring such organizational efficiency. It should know because of the interrelatedness of the organization. Failure of one organization to maintain and uphold the standards set forth by the Joint Commission may mean the beginnings of the organizational collapse due to a weak link. Conclusion As the central force of a highly respected and indispensable healthcare network, the Joint Commission is in a position of great responsibility. It needs to ensure that each linked member (an association, organization or institution, or even an individual involved in the health care industry) possesses unquestionable integrity to be part of an intricate system that serves to uphold and maintain the highest standards of healthcare. Adhering to the highest standards set forth by the commission guarantees trust and reliability in the quality of health services in America and the world over. References Adamski, P. (2007)”Implement a handoff communications approach”, Nursing Management, January, 2007. Argote, L., & Ingram, P. (2000). Knowledge transfer: A basis for competitive advantage in firms. 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