The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations

The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 16,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. An independent, not-for-profit organization, The Joint Commission is the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Since 1951, The Joint Commission has developed state-of-the-art, professionally based standards and evaluated the compliance of health care organizations against these benchmarks.

The Joint Commission accreditation is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization's commitment to meeting certain performance standards. To earn and maintain accreditation, an organization must undergo an on-site survey by a Joint Commission survey team at least every three years. Laboratories must be surveyed every two years.

The Joint Commission's standards address the organization's level of performance in key functional areas, such as patient rights, patient treatment, and infection control, and the standards focus not simply on an organization's ability to provide safe, high quality care, but on its actual performance as well. Standards set forth performance expectations for activities that affect the safety and quality of patient care. If an organization does the right things and does them well, there is a strong likelihood that its patients will experience good outcomes. The Joint Commission develops its standards in consultation with health care experts, providers, measurement experts, purchasers and consumers.