The evidence base for US joint commission hospital accreditation standards: cross sectional study (23 June 2022)

Summary

In this study, Ibrahim et al. evaluated the evidence upon which standards for hospital accreditation by The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (the Joint Commission) are based. They found that in general, recent actionable standards issued by The Joint Commission are seldom supported by high quality data referenced within the issuing documents. The authors suggest that the Joint Commission might consider being more transparent about the quality of evidence and underlying rationale supporting each of its recommendations, including clarifying when and why in certain instances it determines that lower level evidence is sufficient.