Hello, everyone. Just wanted to let you know about some breaking news out of today's Federal Register:
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced in the October 24, 2008 Federal Register that The Joint Commission’s critical access hospital accreditation program will undergo a 180-day probationary period while gaps between the standards and CMS Conditions of Participation (CoP) are fixed.
According to the Federal Register, “review of The Joint Commission revised accreditation standards for hospitals revealed that significant gaps remain between The Joint Commission standards and the Medicare hospital CoPs.”
In addition, “if we determine that an AO [accreditation organization] has failed to adopt requirements comparable to CMS requirements, we may grant a conditional approval of the AO’s deeming authority for a period of up to 180 days to adopt comparable requirements.”
You can read the complete announcement in the Federal Register here.
We'll be watching this as things develop both here in the blog as well as in Briefings on The Joint Commission. What's your impression on this situation? Do you feel like CMS is cracking down deliberately on The Joint Commission? Or is this just a step towards getting everyone on the same page?
