Our vision is that all people always experience safe, high-quality health care.
Today however, health care quality and health outcomes are often worse for racial/ethnic minorities, women, people living in rural communities, people with disabilities, those living in poverty, people with lower educational attainment, and other historically marginalized groups. And although health care equity is often viewed through a social justice lens, we understand it to be first and foremost a quality-of-care problem. Which means to achieve sustainable improvement we need to approach health care equity in the same way we approach other crucial patient safety priorities — by understanding the root causes and implementing targeted standards of care.
State-of-the-art health care equity accreditation standards, which are now a National Patient Safety Goal, help you put patients at the heart of everything you do.
Maternal mortality rate for Black women is 4x higher than that for non-Hispanic White women
Hispanic women are 20 percent more likely to die from cervical cancer than non-Hispanic White women
Asian Americans are eight times more likely to die from hepatitis B than non-Hispanic Whites
Diabetes rates are more than 30 percent higher among Native Americans and Latinos than among Whites
Today, tens of thousands of health care providers across the nation count on Joint Commission accreditation to help them accelerate process standardization that leads to reduced variability and sustainable improvements in quality and safety for those they serve. Our accreditation standards include several long-standing requirements that address health care equity issues.
In 2023, new dedicated health care equity standards became effective and integrated into our hospital, ambulatory health care, and behavioral health care and human services accreditation programs. These standards were among the first of their kind and help to create a consistent national baseline related to the equitable delivery of health care.
Our Health Care Equity Accreditation Resource Center includes innovative strategies leveraged by your peers as well as a growing list of useful industry resources right in one convenient place, directly aligned to the standards requirements.
Joint Commission certifications align to your organization’s health care equity priorities and provide an unparalleled pathway to raise the bar for care delivery across the populations and communities you serve.
The Joint Commission’s Health Care Equity Certification Program requirements were built upon the Joint Commission’s long-standing accreditation standards supporting health care equity and newer requirements to reduce health care disparities. This voluntary program recognizes hospitals and health systems that strive for excellence in their efforts to provide equitable care, treatment, and services.
Improving health care equity requires the efforts and engagement of many people in the health care industry, from organizations at a national level, individual organizations in their patient communities and every type of health care stakeholder in between.
The following organizations are participating in the network:
