Psychiatric service test announced by JCAHO

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recently announced an initiative to test and implement an initial set of core performance measures for hospital-based, inpatient psychiatric services.

The five candidate measures in the set address the following dimensions of in-patient psychiatric care:

* Assessment of potential risks, previous trauma, co-existence of substance abuse and patient strengths
* Restraint use
* Seclusion use
* Patient discharge on multiple antipsychotic medications
* Provision of discharge assessment and aftercare recommendations to responsible community health providers upon discharge

Psychiatric hospitals are now being sought to voluntarily test the measures for a one-year period beginning on January 1, 2007. More than 550 psychiatric hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission are eligible to participate in the test. Participating organizations will be able to substitute the reporting of test measure data for current performance data reporting requirements. Test data from individual hospitals will not be publicly reported.

The Joint Commission will use the measure testing experience to make appropriate refinements to the measures, with a final set of measures becoming available to psychiatric hospitals in the fall of 2008 to meet Joint Commission performance measurement requirements.

Psychiatric hospitals wishing to participate in the testing of the candidate measures should contact Frank Zibrat, associate director, ORYX Implementation, Accreditation Operations, at 630-792-5992 or fzibrat@jcaho.org.