The Joint Commission outlined four things to know about its orthopedic certification programs for ASCs.
Four details:
1. The orthopedic systems of care certification options for ASCs:
● Advanced certification for total hip and total knee replacement
● Core hip replacement certification
● Core knee replacement certification
● Core spinal surgery certification
2. The differences between core and advanced knee and hip certifications:
● Core certification requires a one-day review, while advanced certification requires a two-day review with a patient undergoing an on-site hip or knee replacement.
● Core certification does not require intraoperative observation, but advanced certification does.
● The healthcare organization undergoing the survey chooses the four performance measures, two of which must be clinical.
● Core certification includes core disease-specific care standards, while advanced certification includes those same standards, plus program-specific requirements.
3. Requirements for the core hip and knee replacement certifications include a perioperative team visit, staff hand-off discussion, reliability-focused team, discharge processes review and implementation of functional outcome measures.
4. The core spinal surgery certification requires compliance with national standards, use of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for discectomy, spinal fusion and laminectomy patient populations and collecting four spinal surgery patient population performance measures, two of which must be clinical.