Hello and thank you for joining I'm Jason Spears and I am joined by Ryan Keiler, Associate Director Standards Development and Interpretation at Joint Commission International.
Today's discussion will focus on the importance of Home Care Accreditation and what Home Care organizations should anticipate about the accreditation process.
So, to begin Ryan, why is accreditation important for Home Care organizations?
Accreditation is important for Home Care because we know that when hospitals, ambulatory care clinics, primary clinics, and home care organizations work together as an integrated system they provide better patient outcomes and home care is growing across the globe.
We know its growing at a rapid rate for a couple of reasons.
One of the first reasons is that the world’s population is aging at an exponential rate. Quality of life is improving across the globe also healthcare is improving across the globe, so what we are seeing is in many countries the percentage of the population that is aging beyond the age of 65 is a much larger percentage of the population as a whole than we've ever seen and their aging faster.
Also, we know that in many different countries the family structure is changing or maybe both of the people in the household or more of the people in the household are working and the traditional structures of caring for elderly patients and elderly family in their home might be changing, so there is more of need for home care.
Additionally, with an aging population across the world, one thing we're seeing is an increase in chronic disease. So, home care doesn't necessarily just apply to elderly patient, it applies to people on dialysis, people with other sorts of chronic disease that might be better cared for in the home.
We also know that insurance companies, and governments are working to keep the costs of healthcare down one way that can be done is providing efficient and effective care in the home as opposed to episodic care in hospitals and ambulatory care clinics.
Technology is also increasing, the ability to get technology and medical technology into the home allows different, more complex types of care to be provided in the home.
And finally, we've seen over the last 18 months with COVID is, that hospitals and healthcare systems had to figure out how to provide different types of care in the home to free up some space for patients that may have COVID and what they've been able to see is not only they can do that, they can provide better care sometimes.
And for all those reasons, we know that home care is so important, and accreditation is more than just checking a box, its more than just meeting a requirement, it's an organizations commitment to quality, to patient safety, and staff safety as well. Great!
What processes should home care organizations anticipate in preparation for accreditation?
What we typically recommended is that if a home care organization is looking to go for accreditation that approximately 18-24 months prior to the date when they want to be surveyed for accreditation, they purchase he Home Care manual and this time they can purchase the Home Care, Second Edition manual.
The leadership, the clinical leaders, and key staff review the Home Care Accreditation manual, to familiarize themselves with the standards and what we recommend then is done is a Gap Analysis, so the Home Care organization looks at all their policies, their procedures, and their protocols, to see where they meet the requirements of the Home Care Accreditation manual and the standards and where they don't.
The areas where don't are the gaps and we recommend they put teams together to work collaboratively to close those gaps, by either implementing policies and procedures or protocols and this not only prepares them for the accreditation survey, what it does is along the way it improves patient safety, it improves quality outcomes, and staff safety. And once those policies, procedures, protocols, have been designed and put together, as they're implemented on the Home Care organizations services, then leaders will go out, they would work with the staff who are responsible for implementing those policies and procedures and they would ask them questions just like a surveyor would, to verify that not only have we put these policies and procedures together, they are being implemented and we're able to track the patient outcomes that result from following those policies and procedures.
Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for watching. For more information on Joint Commission International Home Care Accreditation program, please visit our website.
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