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Why The Joint Commission?

The Joint Commission’s well-recognized and highly respected Gold Seal of Approval® sets a medical group apart from its competitors. It demonstrates to the community and staff that it is committed to providing the utmost quality and safest patient care and employee practices — proving the organization strives not only to do things the right way, but to achieve excellence.

  • Dedicated support throughout the accreditation process including a business development representative to help you navigate the application process and an account executive to help you during and after survey
  • Educational resources including a Standards Interpretation Group to help answer standards compliance questions
  • Survey that is tailor-made for your setting and services
  • On-site delivery of accreditation report to expedite receipt of your accreditation decision
  • Access to the SAFER® Dashboard, a business intelligence tool to help your organization make efficient data-driven decisions

The Impact

Achieving accreditation has been shown to create systems that:

  • Improve patient safety and care
  • Institute operational improvements
  • Strengthen financial position
  • Ensure system alignment

Learn how three medical group practices prepared for their survey and the positive impact accreditation had on their organization.

Our Surveyor Team

Joint Commission employed surveyors are highly trained experts who are doctors, nurses, administrators, medical technologists and other professionals in a variety of outpatient healthcare settings. Based on your organization’s structure and needs, you’ll be matched with a survey team who understands the day-to-day issues that confront providers and have the hands-on expertise to help organizations resolve them. They aim to provide a productive and educational experience as well as offer the support your team needs to maintain excellence beyond the survey day.

Our Approach

Accredited organizations describe The Joint Commission’s survey process as educational and collaborative — an opportunity to enhance business practices guided by trusted industry experts. Our surveyors assess compliance to our standards in real time, guided by the client experience and our unique “tracer” method. We conclude by providing your leadership team a thorough, objective assessment and practical strategies for ongoing performance improvement.

System Accreditation

System accreditation is a streamlined process to serve multi-site providers with one survey, one application. It awards a single accreditation decision to an ambulatory system, usually a large organization, composed of a corporate office or a main site, and multiple sites. Under this option, the main site is visited to assess system-wide policies and functions and then a random sample of sites are visited to assess the execution of the policies and the delivery of care.

Primary Care Medical Home (PCMH) Certification

This certification option focuses on care coordination, access to care, and how effectively a primary care clinician and interdisciplinary team work in partnership with the patient. Built into the ambulatory on-site accreditation survey, organizations successfully completing this process will be both Joint Commission accredited and certified as a Primary Care Medical Home.