APPROVED: updated medication selection criteria for hospitals.

reviewing hospital standards and survey processes to customize requirements for specific types of hospitals and patient populations. The new “Standards Applicability Grid” (SAG) chapter in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH ), for example, lists relevant elements of performance (EPs) based on a hospital’s services and includes applicability for acute care, psychiatric, surgical specialty, and now long term acute care hospitals. As a result of the continuing efforts toward customization, The Joint Commission’s Board of Commissioners recently approved a revision to “Medication Management” (MM) Standard MM.02.01.01, EP 2, expanding the criteria for selecting medications to include the populations served. The revision, which becomes effective July 1, 2012, will appear in the 2012 Update 1 to the CAMH (scheduled for publication in March) and in the E-dition® (scheduled for release in April). The standard and the revised EP are shown in the box below; the new text is underlined. P APPROVED: Updated Medication Selection Criteria for Hospitals