The Joint Commission, which evaluates and accredits more than 19,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, introduces Lab Central Connect for accredited laboratories.
The portal is designed to help Joint Commission-accredited laboratories centralize the storage of important survey-related documents, as well as improve safety and quality by maintaining continuous compliance with Joint Commission standards.
The portal could also be useful during an organization’s intracycle monitoring process, which occurs between onsite accreditation surveys.
Users can access the Lab Central Connect portal through The Joint Commission Connect extranet site.
Accredited laboratories enter information, such as key personnel, cytology workload, and annual statistics, as well as whether the lab accepts referral testing and the lab’s test systems menu. Accredited laboratories must enter certain information mandated by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) to Lab Central Connect by January 1, 2013. The portal also includes important information and educational materials along with links to helpful sites.
[Source: The Joint Commission]
