What Is JCI Hospital Accreditation

What is JCI hospital accreditation

JCI accreditation is widely described as the gold standard in global healthcare accreditation. The JCI framework evaluates the quality management of healthcare institutions using total quality management principles as its foundation. Within the JCI model, the expectation is that the healthcare institution develops its ISO 9001 quality-assurance framework in the same direction, so the two systems reinforce each other rather than create duplicate documentation.

In 1987, as accreditation programs were extended beyond hospitals to other healthcare institutions, the original United States body adopted the name Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Joint Commission International (JCI) is the international arm of that not-for-profit organization, established to deliver international accreditation services focused on the quality and safety of healthcare.

Joint Commission International has worked since 1994 with healthcare institutions, ministries of health, and global organizations in 80 countries. Through accreditation and certification services, JCI focuses on advancing the safety of patient care. JCI is recognized as a world leader in healthcare-service quality and patient-safety work. JCI surveyors are highly trained clinicians who act as patient-safety advocates. Their technical focus covers medication safety, infection control, patient care and treatment, patient assessment, and facility safety. JCI standards have been developed by healthcare professionals from around the world and have been tested in many different healthcare settings. Accreditation decisions are issued by an international committee of healthcare professionals.

Over the past 50 years the world has seen a dramatic increase in human mobility. Transport infrastructure has improved, the communication sector has grown rapidly, and together they have produced a highly mobile, transnational culture. The annual travel population, which was around 70 million in the 1970s, has since passed 1 billion. Patients naturally expect the same service standards in the countries they visit as they receive at home. The addition of health tourism, which now represents annual figures approaching USD 130 billion, has made it essential for hospitals outside the United States to demonstrate, through bodies such as JCI, that they meet an internationally defined standard.

Today JCI continues to work as an international organization that raises standards of patient care through consultancy, accreditation, publication, and education. In June 2011, JCI was assessed and accredited by the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) against its own audit-quality process and standards. That decision confirms, at an international level, the credibility of the accreditation and survey process that JCI operates.

ISQua accreditation guarantees that the standards and procedures JCI uses to survey healthcare-service operations meet the highest international reference criteria for accreditation bodies. For a hospital, this matters because the legitimacy of its own JCI certificate rests on the legitimacy of the body issuing it.