The Joint Commission, Oak Brook, Ill, has expanded the pilot testing of its WikiHealthCare application to include a collaborative approach to developing accreditation and certification standards.
Participants can visit the site to provide input at the beginning stages of standards development, engage in discussions about emerging issues pertaining to different types of service settings, help determine how standards might be applied to address the issues, and suggest performance requirements that should be used to measure compliance with standards. The Joint Commission plans to use the input when developing accreditation or certification standards.
During the pilot testing process, the first standards issues to be considered are the transfer of health information, pharmacist review of protocols for contrast agents in radiology, and how health care services can be provided using the concepts of clinical microsystems and patient-centered care.
During the next few weeks other issues will be added, such as surgical site infections, MRI and imaging safety, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.
WikiHealthCare is sponsored by The Joint Commission, but the content developed on the site is non-proprietary, open source information. Participation within the collaborative forum has no impact on an organization’s accreditation status since all users participate as individuals, not as representatives of their organization.
The free, Internet-based collaborative forum can be accessed through a link on The Joint Commission’s home page, or at wikihealthcare.jointcommission.org .
