WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a move no one expected, JCAHO took over control of airport security today from the Transportation Security Administration. “Took over” is the best way to put it. The President did not give JCAHO this responsibility. JCAHO simply had people show up and take over the metal detectors at every American airport.
The overfed, inattentive TSA agents were no match for the mean, lean JCAHO inspectors.
“We are the real experts at letting nothing slip by,” said JCAHO’s President,
Angela Ovah-Zellis. “We heard the call to duty and answered it.”
As most American nurses have learned, JCAHO is famous for things like spending oodles of time looking for lidless cups of coffee at nurses stations and smudges on nursing lounge windows, things that don’t really matter to patients. This attention to trivial detail will improve upon TSA’s record of letting dangerous things like crayons and guitar picks on commercial flights.
“Crayons are no joke,” Ovah-Zellis told GomerBlog. “If a passenger—a child for example—ever got onto the roof of a jet during a flight, that kid could mark up the windshield of the cockpit with dark blue and purple crayons so that the pilot could not see what’s up ahead. It is not far-fetched.”
At the same time, JCAHO often rates hospitals without sending “surveyors” into patients’ rooms to watch actual patient care. Again, JCAHO President Ovah-Zellis: “What matters to us is what happens behind the scenes. So what if a nurse calls a code and saves a life? That doesn’t count for much if she leaves candy bar wrappers on a lounge table. Call me old fashioned, but these things matter.”
Six hundred flight departures were delayed for an hour or more on Day One of the JCAHO takeover. “Would you want your husband or wife to fly on a plane that the didn’t have toilet paper that was the approved color? Or that had movies that exceeded the approved playing time? I certainly wouldn’t,” the JCAHO leader gravely intoned.
Next on the JCAHO agenda: taking over the purchase of new books for American libraries and overseeing Major League Baseball’s rules about running the bases.
Check out Neverkidd’s collection of medical stories, True Tales from a Physician Assistant, on Amazon.com.
