Joint Commission and ASHE Launch Portal to Address Environmental Challenges

Resources focus on most challenging standards for hospital compliance

T

he Joint Commission and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) recently

launched the Physical Environment Portal, an online hub that provides hospi- tals with resources and tools for achieving compliance with the eight most frequently cited Environment of Care (EC) and Life Safety (LS) standards.*

Unveiled July 14, 2015, in front of an audience at ASHE’s 52nd Annual Conference in Boston, the new portal is publicly available at http://www.joint commission.org/topics/the_physical

_environment.aspx and includes resources for facilities managers as well as hospital leaders. In addition, an enhanced feature of the portal that is

* Organizations can access resources related to Emergency Management (EM) standards on

The Joint Commission’s Emergency Management Resources Portal, launched in April 2014 (see June 2014 Perspectives, page 1), at http://www.joint commission.org/emergency_management.aspx.

only available to accredited organizations (through Joint Commission Connect™) provides actual surveyor comments and other “customers-only” resources.

“The Joint Commission is very pleased to join with ASHE to offer the Physical Environment Portal,” says Mark

R. Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH, president and chief executive officer, The Joint Commission. “We created this portal in response to customer needs, identified through 10 focus groups with

customers and surveyors. As the national leader in patient safety and health care improvement, we felt it was very import- ant that each module be readily available at no charge to anyone seeking this information.”

Each month, the portal will highlight one of the eight EC/LS standards cited most frequently for noncompliance.

Each standard will be highlighted in a two-part, two-month module. The first part of the module, geared toward facil-

ities managers, will focus on what the requirements are and what compliance looks like. The second part, released the following month, will focus on resources for leadership and the clinical team, help- ing them to evaluate the organization’s level of compliance. A new module will post every two months, and the previous ones will remain on the site for contin- uous reference (see the box below for the planned schedule of portal topics).

The Joint Commission hosts the portal on its website and provides links to module-specific information at the ASHE site (http://www.ashe.org). The portal also provides several solutions developed by Joint Commission Resources that have been published previously in Joint Commission Perspectives and Environ- ment of Care News. Resources will be offered in a variety of formats including articles, videos, and infographics.

“The facility and building systems play a vital role in creating the healing

environment,” says Dale Woodin, CHFM, FASHE, senior execu-

Portal Topics and Schedule

Launch: July 14, 2015

tive director, ASHE. “Consistent compliance with the Environment of Care and Life Safety standards is an excellent indicator of high reliability in building systems.

ASHE is proud to collaborate with The Joint Commission to provide focused tools and resources to assist organizations in achieving compliance and high reliability.”

For more information, please contact George Mills, MBA, FASHE, CEM, CHFM, CHSP,

director, Department of Engineer- ing, The Joint Commission, at gmills@jointcommission.org. EC

Copyright 2015 The Joint Commission Environment of Care News, August 2015, Volume 18, Issue 8

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