Joint Commission announces care-integration certification

The Joint Commission has announced a new certification for integrated care, which assesses how well healthcare providers incorporate care transitions, hand-offs and information sharing during patients' transitions between hospital and outpatient care environments. The standards, which emphasize clinical integration, patient/family engagement and leadership, were tailored to accommodate multiple types, sizes and categories of healthcare providers. "During the evaluation for certification, many organizations discover their practices are merely affiliated and not truly integrated," said David Baker, M.D., executive vice president of the Joint Commission's Division of Health Care Quality Evaluation. "This certification solidifies the links between healthcare settings and provides a pathway for leaders to improve patient satisfaction, decrease readmissions and reduce emergency department use." Announcement