The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is the oldest of the accrediting organizations. There are five levels of accreditation that show how well an organization performed in specified areas and how likely the organization is to provide quality care. Organizations receive this rating when they have unsatisfactory compliance in a specific area. To maintain accreditation, recommendations made must be complied with within a specified period of time. Only 1 percent of applying organizations were denied accreditation or had their accreditation revoked.
Accreditation is generally valid for three years.
The American Accreditation Health Care Commission, originally incorporated as the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission, began by accrediting utilization review programs, which are programs that review the appropriateness of care provided to patients. The name change reflects the organization s expansion into accreditation of a broad range of network and workers compensation managed care plans. Because state regulation of HMOs and other managed care plans varies substantially and is changing rapidly, information on these activities is not covered in this manual.