Deeming-Related Revisions to Requirements for Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals. Additions Changes Resutlting from CMS Final Rule.

Effective July 1, 2015, The Joint Commission has added and revised several requirements for hospitals and revised one requirement for critical access hospitals to better align with changes made in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Conditions of Participation (CoPs) for hospitals. The CoP changes resulted from the May 12, 2014, final rule, which was part of CMS’s effort to remove requirements that were determined to be unnecessary, obsolete, or burdensome. The changes to Joint Commission requirements are primarily for hospitals with swing beds. One revision—to a Medical Staff (MS) requirement—applies to both hospitals and critical access hospitals. For information about previous changes (effective September 29, 2014) related to the May 2014 final rule, see the October 2014 issue of Perspectives. The new and revised language, underlined in the box below, is currently available at http://jointcommission.org/ standards_information/prepublication_standards.aspx and will be published in the spring E-dition® update for both hospitals and critical access hospitals. The revisions will be published in print this spring in the 2015 Update 1 to the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals and this fall in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Critical Access Hospitals. For more information, please contact Laura Smith, project director, Department of Standards and Survey Methods, The Joint Commission, at lsmith@jointcommission .org. P