CHICAGO, IL – This past Thursday, the Joint Commission officially cited itself as a major obstacle for patient care and safety. The Joint Commission released in a statement Monday, “If we truly are trying to improve healthcare we had to write ourselves up for making it difficult and dangerous to take care of patients.”
The Joint Commission, formally known as JHACO, has been evaluating and critiquing hospitals for years under the guise of “patient safety.” Now that most hospitals are relatively safe, in order for the JC to stay employed they have to present errors that must be fixed that are not necessary patient safety issues. Their safety issues seems to always be a moving target.
A common citation is unlabeled syringes, a reasonable request because all medical solutions look the same: clear. Then they announced that pre-labeled syringes are illegal, forcing a two-provider medication team. One person needs to draw the medication up while the other simultaneously labels the contents with the drug name, concentration, date, date of expiration, initials, barometric pressure, and a list of the medication’s side effects.
The tipping point came when they recently announced a mandatory timeout prior to starting CPR.
The JC admitted to “changing the rules from time to time to guarantee a job for life.”
Just the mere presence of the Joint Commission is a safety hazard, the report clearly states. “When [the Joint Commission] is surveying a hospital, all personnel from the physicians to the janitors are under fear that the surveyor, who has been out of practice for quite some time, will see something done that is not a ‘best practice’ and cite the institution. This increased stress causes medical errors and poor performance during procedures, i.e. surgery.”
In fact, a recent survey demonstrated an increase in medical errors of 238% at a hospital during the days the Joint Commission is present. Surgical complications in surveyed rooms jump a staggering 430% likely due to the multiple distractions and questioning.
The report continues, “We require hospitals to follow evidence-based medicine even if the quality of the study or evidence is poor. This is a danger,” the report states, “because many critical studies have been overturned for various reasons in the past and we need to trust health care workers who are actually treating patients day in and day out.”
They have also commented on hospitals’ preparation for their survey, explaining how experienced nurses will get pulled from patient care to practice mock rounds. “We apologize for causing harm to patients by having hospitals take good nurses away from patient care,” the report continued. The JC also admitted they now know that hospitals change the way they practice for one day and the revert back to normal safe care.
“To be honest, we couldn’t tell a patient from a worker,” an anonymous surveyor told GomerBlog. “And to make matters worse I think we are breaking obvious HIPAA rules, by looking through thousands of charts without each patient’s permission.”
The Joint Commission will also start burning all of their clipboards. The reason? They are a transport of disease from hospital to hospital and have “done more to spread MRSA” than any known entity. “We’re sorry, we just wanted to look important with the clipboard, it made us feel important.”
When questioned by Sally Wright from USA Today on why the Joint Commission requires food to be labeled, they responded, “We just wanted to know what was in the fridge so we could enjoy a delicious snack during these ridiculous surveys.”
