They got their “top performer” awards and nobody bothered looking into the illegalities the system was committing.
They hope it works even better this time.
Auditor that Accredited VA Hospitals Where Patients Died to Review Same Hospitals
The same independent auditor who accredited Veterans Affairs hospitals where multiple patients died from delays in care—and in some cases named them as “top performersâ€â€”has been chosen by the VA to complete a new review of those same hospitals.
Earlier this month, new VA Secretary Robert McDonald announced that the Joint Commission, a hospital accreditor, would review scheduling practices across the VA system.
If there is a contract in place that has caused this stupidity, it needs to be broken. Obvously, the contractor failed the first time. Maybe go for the second lowest bidder this time.
JCAHO (Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) is *the* (and AFAIK *only*) hospital accreditation authority, it’s not like you can fire Accenture and hire a different financial auditor. They are bean-counters who look at documented process and how well your paper trail shows you follow it.. That kind of review will never find the kinds of problems that have been publicized at VA Hospitals..
As usual the reporter on the linked story knows squat-all about the subject of the report and misses a major issue (JCAHO’s certification process is as flawed as every other Big Government program because it can’t catch this kind of fraud)…
Rick’s right. My first job out of college was working for the Chief Medical Officer of a VA hospital in the process of transitioning to a clinic model, so I got to see JCAHO in action, and it’s exactly the same as ISO or COA or any other “quality” audit model: as he says, you set up documented processes and they check to see that you followed them. If your process was “when there are more patients than doctors can see, shunt the patients to these beds over here and let them die,” you’d be graded on how well you followed that process.
Any good organization well knows how to play these auditors like fiddles. I’ve had fun with BSI for several years now.