For nearly 20 years, The Joint Commission has collaborated with the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Stroke Association (ASA) to help improve cardiovascular and stroke care. Recently, we updated the eligibility requirements for our codeveloped cardiac and stroke certifications.
Effective immediately, and in consultation with our partners, we have removed the percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) volume criteria from the Primary Heart Attack Center (PHAC), Comprehensive Heart Attack Center (CHAC) and Comprehensive Cardiac Center (CCC) Certifications. Additionally, we have reduced the aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) volume criteria for Comprehensive Stroke Center (CSC) Certification.
Carefully following the best available evidence, these changes will allow more cardiac and stroke centers to provide safe, high-quality patient care through the framework certification provides – serving more patients and further reducing the burden of certification while still accessing its benefits.
To guide this decision, The Joint Commission and the AHA/ASA conducted an extensive literature review about the relationship between patient volume and the quality and safety of care delivered, as well as discussions with stakeholders and healthcare organizations The Joint Commission serves.
The changes by certification type include:
- For PHAC certified organizations: Program eligibility no longer requires organizations to achieve 200 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) per year, nor requires the achievement of 36 primary PCI procedural volumes per year for STEMI and STEMI equivalent patients.
- For CHAC and CCC certified organizations: Program eligibility no longer requires organizations to achieve 400 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) per year, nor requires the achievement of 36 primary PCI procedural volumes per year for STEMI and STEMI equivalent patients.
- For CSC certified organizations: Program eligibility no longer requires provision of care to 20 or more patients per year with a diagnosis of subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm. The new requirement is provision of care to 10 or more patients per year with a diagnosis of subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm.
The Comprehensive Certification Manual for Disease-Specific Care will include the new volume criteria eligibility requirements starting in January 2026, and the E-Application will update soon to reflect these changes. While we are removing or updating the eligibility requirements based on the specific certification program, we will still collect volume data in the application to understand each program’s volume.
For questions, please contact certification@jointcommission.org.
Elizabeth Mort, MD, MPH, vice president and chief medical officer for The Joint Commission authored a recent article in Future of Personal Health on how healthcare facilities must implement and continuously maintain infection prevention and control measures to reduce healthcare-associated infections and protect patient safety. The article directs readers to The Joint Commission’s free Infection Prevention and Control & Antibiotic Stewardship Resource Center.
The Resource Center aims to help healthcare organizations develop comprehensive infection prevention and control and antibiotic stewardship programs to prevent disease spread, safeguard vulnerable populations, and maintain a safe environment. It also offers infection prevention and control professionals – whether novice or expert – access to curated collections of resources with actionable strategies and tools to support their compliance with related Joint Commission accreditation requirements.
Read the article: Preventing Infections Within Healthcare Facilities
Refreshed Accelerate PI™ Dashboard Reports containing data through the third quarter of 2024 are available for Joint Commission accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals. Data in the reports comes from chart-abstracted quality measure data reported by hospitals to The Joint Commission under the ORYX® program.
The dashboards, available to both Joint Commission surveyors and accredited hospitals, are intended to be a springboard for conversations on data, performance measures, and quality improvement during the survey process.
Accelerate PI Dashboard Reports are located under the Resources and Tools menu below the DASH heading in Joint Commission Connect®.
As a reminder, on Monday The Joint Commission upgraded its authentication platform for all applications – including Joint Commission Connect® – in order to enhance security. If you haven’t already reset your passwords and selected your preferred authentication method (email, text, call or Microsoft Authenticator app), now is the time to do that.
See the step-by-step instructions.
For additional assistance, please contact your organization’s account executive. If you do not know who serves as your account executive, call 888-527-9255.