The 2009 standards are here--shuffling the deck!
Did you hear that great sighing sound earlier? In all candor, I have to tell you that I was one of those sighers.
(Is “sighers” a word? Probably not, but the blogosphere can’t rest on such formalities).
The other shoe has dropped, and The Joint Commission 2009 standards changes have (finally!) been posted on the Web.
The question then becomes: Celebration or commiseration? What do we do?
For the moment, it appears that a moderately restrained celebration will suffice. The key words indicating the disposition of the current standards I noted in reviewing the materials are the following:
- Retention--No change in the applicable EP, i.e., the song remains the same.
- Consolidation--A slight change, a blending, if you will, of risk management activities under a general umbrella. For instance, all the safety education elements are now living in one happy house, EC.03.01.01, and, perhaps most controversially, the safety and security standards have become one under EC.02.01.01.
- Split--EPs previously containing multiple component requirements are broken down into the individual components. For instance, EC.3.10, EP #3 under the 2008 standards speaks to the risk management of chemicals, which has been further broken out in the 2009 standards under EC.02.02.01 to reflect the risk management of hazardous chemicals, radiation equipment and lasers, and hazardous gases and vapors.
As near as I can tell (and this has pretty much been the indication as this initiative has rolled out), there are no new requirements, per se. What appears to be changing is more a function of how EPs could be scored during a survey, especially those (banana) splits.
In my client work, I have often compared the current survey process’ arrival at “jeopardy” as not so much death by a sucking chest wound, but more death by a thousand cuts--and the Swiss survey knife appears to have grown a couple more blades. While my obsessive-compulsive disorder has not yet resulted in my counting up the number of EPs in play, rest assured I will.
There is a fundamental constant that every time The Joint Commission deck gets shuffled, there is a likelihood of some resulting confusion, not only in the EC community at large, but also in the surveyor community.
And that’s not counting the new emergency management and life safety chapters. More on that September 5--you’ll have to come to Boston for the full scoop.
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