Joint Commission

The JCAHO or Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is an American non-profit organization that was established in 1952.

The organization is based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Intent of the JCAHO is to increase the safety and quality of medical services available to the public in the USA. These health services are certified. In addition, related services are offered to support the improvement of process quality in healthcare providers.

Often for the designation of the organization also use the abbreviation " Joint Commission " or ( phonetically ) " Je - i Ko " is used (English for J Co).

The organization employs investigators who are sent to health care providers to evaluate their procedures and equipment. The organizations studied are then evaluated with a value from 1 to 100, with 100 "perfect" means. The studied organizations are highly motivated to do well in these evaluations, since accreditation is an essential factor to obtain payments from Medicare or managed care organizations. However, creating hospitals to 99 %, these audit what some would suggest also a conflict of interest, the examiner ( received about 100 million euros a year in fees and revenue from hospitals ). On the other hand a successful accreditation by JCAHO for most hospitals in the U.S. is vital, as they must not deal with patients of the two major U.S. health insurance Medicare and Medicaid without this accreditation. Therefore, each clinic employs quality and accreditation agents who prepare the organization continuously on the triennial review.

But even outside of the USA leads JCAHO accreditations, the Klinikum Chemnitz gGmbH was on July 8, 2000 as the first German clinic certified. This was followed on 13 April 2002, the DRK Kliniken Berlin, and finally the German Armed Forces Central Hospital Koblenz on October 2, 2010.

President of JCAHO is Dr. Mark R. Chassin.