What’s Your Strategy for Becoming Joint Commission Certified?

Achieving Joint Commission certification is something every healthcare staffing agency needs to make a decision on. Although the certification is not officially required, it may as well be as far as getting new contracts with hospitals goes. These days, many hospitals are screening staffing agencies from their RFP process and purging them from their staffing lists if they do not have the certification.
 
In 2005 The Joint Commission (JCAHO) starting offering certification programs for healthcare staffing agencies. Previously, this process was only part of hospital evaluations. The certification is not cheap and preparing for the process isn't easy, especially when you have your day-to-day operations to manage. Further, once you've been certified, it's imperative that you maintain the standards and processes that have been established in order to retain your certification.
 
Preparing for the Joint Commission certification process requires a significant amount of time and attention from your organization and can greatly distract you from growing your business. During this economy, the last thing you want to be is distracted. Therefore, this is the type of project that is best managed by outside consultants who are experts in the process and can guarantee your success.
 
One such company is Theodore Drew & Associates. Theodore Drew & Associates is a healthcare staffing consulting firm that launched in 2009. They have a 100% success rate at helping over 20 healthcare staffing companies across the nation achieve Joint Commission Certification.

Can Joint Commission Certification be used to increase Market Share?

In speaking with the Thad Dufelmeier, the owner of Theodore Drew & Associates, he stated the following:

“What must be understood regarding supplemental nurse staffing in this downturn is that the number of nurses employed by hospitals increased by 8% over the last 18 months. That's almost 125,000 nurses.

At the AONE Conference in Indianapolis this year, the Nurse Executives I spoke with were relishing their ability to staff their hospitals with minimal use of supplemental staff. Many of them did acknowledge the higher cost of increased overtime and the development of internal staffing pools. However, they were mostly concerned about the quality issue when needing to use supplemental staff. Joint Commission Certification will increasingly be considered a solution to the that very legitimate concern.”

Who does Theodore Drew & Associates work with and… How do they do it?

Theodore Drew & Associates works primarily with small to mid-sized healthcare staffing companies across the country, guiding them through the process of becoming Joint Commission certified.  “We basically turn a 2,000 hour project into a 200 hour project” claims Mr. Dufelmeier.  Theodore Drew and Associates conduct in-depth gap analysis and create a comprehensive plan for each company to put them on track to becoming certified in a few months time. They also provide ongoing services to ensure you maintain your certification for years to come. All of their services are tailored to fit within your budget.
 
Theodore Drew & Associates also provides some free staffing agency resources on their site that are useful in helping you get a head start on the certification process.
 
Nurse Testing Creative Solutions and Rossa Rossa & Associates also provide similar services in this area.

If you haven't yet gone through the process of becoming Joint Commission certified, I highly recommend you develop a plan to do so soon. I would also strongly recommend that this plan take into consideration working with one of these companies to make the process more efficient and far more affordable for you.

Comments

[Caleb English]

I’m glad to see this being addressed. The Right Solutions has been JCAHO certified since '05 and just passed our third audit with no recommendations. That being said, any time you can save time on the front of certification is huge, provided you keep a focused plan on maintaining certification. The hard work of individuals in our organization to become certified has given them the knowledge to stay in compliance and in my opinion ultimately led to better patient care. With ever increasing competition in the Healthcare Staffing Industry, firms need to seriously consider the investment into becoming certified to stay in the game.

[Jason Lander]

Thanks for sharing this insight.

[Benjamin J Joerg]

Great articles and thanks for the information - We enjoy being CERTIFIED that is for sure!

[Therese Nery]

Joint Commission certification is a right of passage for any healthcare staffing company. Not only does it ensure you keep your contracts, as many hospitals now require it, but it could also help to open doors for new contracts as well. We teamed with Theodore and Associates for our JCAHO certification because we wanted to stay focused on growing our revenue. Thad and his team made the process easy and painless. More importantly, he's trained us on how to MAINTAIN our compliance- introducing policies and procedures, sytems etc. The certification is nice, but the peace of mind that we will maintain our certification with ease is the cake!

[rick boysal]

Becoming JCAHO Certfied has opened so many doors ffor our firm. Theodor Drew and Associates certainly made the process as smooth as possible.

[Jason Lander]

Rick & Therese - thanks for the feedback! It's great to have customers of Theodore Drew & Associates share their experience.

[Steve]

TD & Associates played an instrumental role in preparing us for Joint Commission certification. We earned the seal of approval in December and have seen an immediate return on our investment of time, money, and resources. -PHS Staffing

[Nancy Campbell]

This is an excellent post. Very interesting indeed. keep posting such stuff!