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Health Care: Criteria Used to Evaluate Hospital Accreditation Process Need Reevaluation

HRD-90-89 Published: Jun 11, 1990. Publicly Released: Jun 11, 1990.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) survey process, focusing on HCFA problems in comparing its survey results with those of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Health and Human Services The Secretary of Health and Human Services should direct the Administrator, HCFA, to work with JCAHO to: (1) develop a comprehensive crosswalk between its standards and Medicare's conditions of participation (COP); (2) identify and resolve any significant differences between JCAHO and HCFA survey requirements; and (3) require use of the crosswalk in analyzing and comparing survey results.
Closed – Implemented
JCAHO and HCFA have developed a crosswalk between their respective standards and HCFA is using it in its hospital survey activities.
Department of Health and Human Services The Secretary of Health and Human Services, should direct the Administrator, HCFA, to establish a means to measure the significance of differences in state agency and JCAHO survey results and analyze the differences to determine if any trends or systemic problems exist.
Closed – Implemented
HCFA has written a data-base program to compare differences in survey results and enter results from FY 1989 state surveys. The final JCAHO/HCFA crosswalk has been completed and HCFA used it to produce its FY 1989 reports.

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Topics

Eligibility criteriaEvaluation criteriastate relationsHospitalsInstitution accreditationStandards evaluationSurveysMedicareQuality assuranceNursing services