Joint Commission criticized for lax oversight

The Wall Street Journal reported on the Joint Commission, the non-profit organization that accredits almost 80% of the hospitals in the US. Accreditation from the Joint Commission is often looked to for assurance that a certain hospital is operating properly and safely. The article points out, however, that the organization "typically takes no action to revoke or modify accreditation when state inspectors find serious safety violations" and that the "Joint Commission revoked the accreditation of less than 1% of the hospitals that were out of Medicare compliance in 2014." Those findings raise the obvious question of what accreditation actually means if it does not change with the hospitals' safety records.

Apparently, the Joint Commission's response is that hospitals are given some time to rectify any safety lapses, and only in rare cases are the accreditation designations allowed to lapse. This policy raises a question of whether patients should at least be able to find out about recent safety lapses, even if the hospital is in the midst of correcting its practices. Patients could benefit from such transparency and decide whether they want to continue visiting such a hospital, but the Joint Commission has kept its inspection reports confidential. That the primary revenue for the Joint Commission comes from the hospitals that it accredits seems to parallel the situation where financial ratings agencies were beholden to the banks that paid them... a situation that did not go well for the general public in 2008.