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JOINT COMMISSION ON ACCREDITATION OF HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS


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JCAHO URGES IMMEDIATE CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE
BIOTERRORISM RESPONSE

For complete text of testimony:

http://www.jcaho.org/news/testimony1010.html

(Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. - October 10, 2001) The Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) today called on Congress
to act quickly to improve the nation's bioterrorism response capacity by
developing system-wide, integrated community approaches to emergency
management that are supported at the federal and state levels.

At bioterrorism hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Joint
Commission President Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., emphasized that strong
linkages between the medical care and public health systems are essential
to effective bioterrorism preparation.

"We as a nation are not unprepared to deal with bioterrorism, but this
country's public health and medical care systems could be better prepared
than they are today," said Dr. O'Leary. We need to start addressing the
identified needs with all due haste."

The following preparedness priorities were underscored in Dr. O'Leary's
testimony:

* Medical care workers must be trained to become familiar with pathogens
that may be used in bioterrorism, aware of the symptoms they produce,
knowledgeable about their routes of transmission, and alert to the
possibility of their use.

* A single, integrated system of response must be created to effectively
address a full range of diseases and rare events, whether of terrorist or
natural origins.

* Community or state-wide capacity analyses of preparedness that include
available medical facilities and delivery sites must be carried out.

* A medical/public health surveillance system should be established to
promptly detect naturally occurring epidemics as well as terrorist
activity.

* Issues relating to precious national supplies (e.g., vaccines) and their
disbursement need to be evaluated and resolved.

* National funding policies, which have progressively reduced the
elasticity of the medical system to ramp-up to a peak demand, must be
re-evaluated.

If the system capabilities are appropriately upgraded, the medical care
and public health systems will be able to respond effectively to massive
disasters," said Dr. O'Leary.

For more than 30 years, JCAHO has required its accredited health care
organizations to meet established disaster preparedness standards.
Earlier this year, these standards were significantly modified to
introduce the concept of community involvement into the preparedness
process. Specifically:

* The focus of the standards has shifted from simple emergency
preparedness to emergency management. Health care organizations are now
expected to address four specific phases of disaster planning:
mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

* Health care organizations must now take an "all-hazards approach" to
planning. This means that health care organizations must develop a chain
of command approach that is common to all hazards which are determined to
be credible threats to the community. This planning starts with a
vulnerability analysis against an unconstrained list of extreme events.

* Each health care organization must annually participate in at least one
community-wide practice drill relevant to its vulnerability analysis.
These drills must evaluate the communication, coordination, and attention
to chain of command structures developed by the health care organization
and the community.

"These new Joint Commission accreditation standards for emergency
management represent a significant step toward improving the nation's
readiness for a biological emergency, but federal leadership will be
necessary to convince many organizations that bioterrorism threats are
worthy of their serious attention and commitment," Dr. O'Leary stressed.
The Joint Commission recently conducted a survey of hospitals to assess
their community linkages for purposes of mounting a bioterrorism response.
Among the obstacles identified by those hospitals that did not have
effective community linkages were the lack of community awareness of the
issue and, therefore, interest in planning; and inadequate resources for
bioterrorism planning and training at both the community and organization
levels.

###
Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
Organizations' mission is to continuously improve the safety and quality
of care provided to the public through the provision of health care
accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in
health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits
more than 18,000 health care organizations and programs in the United
States, including almost 11,000 hospitals and home care organizations, and
more than 7,000 other health care organizations that provide long term
care, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services.
The Joint Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery
networks, and other managed care entities. An independent, not-for-profit
organization, the Joint Commission is the nation's oldest and largest
standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.







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