Home health providers serve as JCAHO advisors
Home health providers serve as JCAHO advisors
Members to focus on integrated accreditation
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has a new Home Care Advisory Group. The 15-person panel will meet four times annually and seek input in the areas of home health, home medical equipment, hospice, and home pharmaceutical services.
Providers were chosen to ensure diversity and were selected based on the following criteria:
• geographic location (East, Midwest, South, West);
• setting (rural to urban);
• services provided (organizations that provide single home care service and those that provide multiple services);
• agency size (number of patients);
• ownership (single-owner agencies to corporations);
• niche markets (pediatrics, Alzheimer’s, etc.).
"Great lengths have been taken to make certain these groups accurately reflect the diversity and complexity of the home care industry," says Maryanne Popovich, RN, executive director for JCAHO’s Home Care Accreditation program.
"The collaboration of these broad-based groups will result in an integrated accreditation program that addresses the varied emphases of the different segments within the home care industry," she explains.
The committee "is not about rewriting standards," says newly appointed member Susan Schulmerich, executive director of Montefiore Home Health Agency in Bronx, NY. [The members] are looking at the format of JCAHO publications and how to go about showing a cross between old and new standards to make [publications] more reader-friendly."
The Home Care Advisory Group met for the first time May 1 to provide input on proposed changes to the survey process, manuals, and standards; surveyor education; and application procedures. In the two meetings since it was first created, Schulmerich says the committee has been hard at work examining JCAHO fee structures and acknowledging that "one size doesn’t fit all agencies."
Already the group has a pre-publication draft of a JCAHO standards manual and, Schulmerich says, "the staff who have had an advance look at it say it is much more user-friendly and easier to follow in such areas as scoring guidelines."
Schulmerich contends that this represents a change in JCAHO. "It is concerned about [home care’s] welfare from a financial and reasonable expectation standpoint, and [the group] seems committed to making the Joint Commission accreditation process less burdensome . . . less anxiety producing." Home health providers serving on the Home Care Advisory Group are:
Marva Austin, Nurses n Kids at Home, New Castle, DE.
Mark Baiada, Bayada Nurses, Morristown, NJ.
Tom Blagg, San Joaquin Health Care Inc., Fresno, CA.
Debbie Bratton, Maury Regional Home Services, Columbia, TN.
Judi D’Orsi, Alzheimer’s Home Care, Columbus, OH.
Susan Goldwater, Hospice of the Valley, Phoenix.
Judy Hicks, CM HealthCare Resources, Northbrook, IL.
Martha Hoeger, Prairie du Chien (WI) Memorial Hospital Home Health Care.
Meg Maley, Oncology Care Home Health Specialists, Newark, DE.
Fran Moffitt, Basin Home Health, Farmington, NM.
Maureen Rizzo, St. Johnland Nursing Home, Kings Park, NY.
Susan Schulmerich, Montefiore Medical Center Home Health Agency, Bronx, NY.
Susan Sender, Gentiva Health Services, Melville, NY.
Sue Vandenbroucke, LifeStyle Options, Schaumburg, IL.
Ken Wessel, Home Care Options, Paterson, NJ.
[For more information, contact:
• Susan Schulmerich, Executive Director, Montefiore Home Health Agency, One Fordham Plaza, Suite 1100, Bronx, NY 10458. Telephone: (718) 405-4407.]
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