Proposed subforum: Quality Systems for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers

[MIREGMGR]

Subtitle to improve Google searchability by prospective users: JCAHO, NCAIO, ISO 9001

See this thread for a discussion of changes to US federal governmental oversight of healthcare providers that are likely to encourage them to consider implementing ISO 9001 quality systems.

US hospital quality and regulatory managers typically are not ISO 9001 familiar at this point, because JCAHO (the present predominant accreditation/regulatory body for US hospitals) has a procedural and prescriptive/best-practices focus, rather than a systems approach like ISO 9001. One requisite step for consideration of the NCAIO/ISO 9001 approach by a hospital will be for its relevant managers to become knowledgable with the issues involved.

Elsmar Cove serves as a useful and valuable information exchange for quality and regulatory personnel in many other business sectors. I'm not aware of any other forum at this time that provides similar opportunities for hospital-associated individuals to similarly exchange information. Certainly I would expect that as the individuals in question are presented with the responsibility to become more knowledgable and begin to address specific questions, they will begin to search the internet for information sources, including discussion forums.

Some hospitals in other nations already use ISO 9001 based quality systems, of course. Their related personnel likely would benefit from further information sources as well.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for Elsmar Cove to extend its services to another segment of the greater quality/regulatory community.

The knowledge base of such a new subforum could be started off by moving selected past posts into it that pertain to hospital quality systems, JCAHO, and related topics.

[Marc]

Are you thinking of a sub-forum under ISO 9001 or a stand alone (since they're different)?

A title like "Hospital quality systems, JCAHO, NCAIO, and related topics"?

[MIREGMGR]

Originally Posted by Marc

Are you thinking of a sub-forum under ISO 9001 or a stand alone (since they're different)?

Either would work. A stand-alone might be more visible to new users in the current board graphical interface.

A title like "Hospital quality systems, JCAHO, NCAIO, and related topics"?

In general I like that...but:

JCAHO is the name of a business, but also is common parlance for the system of prescriptive best-practice requirements that they impose. JCAHO is very searchable under the latter meaning.

NCAIO is only the name of a business at this point...an ISO 9001 registrar focusing on health care providers, of course. Someone searching on "ISO 9001" and "hospital" wouldn't get any hits on a title that used "NCAIO" to represent that pairing.

I don't know the answer to whether it might be better to use something contrived, but more searchable, like "Hospital Quality Systems: JCAHO and/or ISO 9001". Basic definitional info on NCAIO as an accreditation/registrar business, and on JCAHO as an accreditation business, then could be included in a sticky FAQ post.

[Coury Ferguson]

I have added a poll. Covers, tell us what you think about this new forum (sub-forum).

[Marc]

No problem adding the forum, but now I need your advice on where in the listing it should go.

Let's assume a stand alone forum. Please take a minute to visit the Main Forum Index and have a look. Under what category (National and International Business Standards?) you think it belongs under.

And I need a title. Maybe "Hospital & Health Care Provider Quality Systems"? That might fit in the "Manufacturing and Service Process Topics and Business Systems Processes" category.

Then again, if JCAHO and NCAIO are businesses specializing in ISO 9001 implementation in health care, maybe it should be a sub-forum of the "ISO 9001 - Quality Management Systems Standard " forum (which already has 2 sub-forums (not that more sub-forums is a problem).

[MIREGMGR]

Originally Posted by Marc

No problem adding the forum, but now I need your advice on where in the listing it should go.

Let's assume a stand alone forum. Please take a minute to visit the Main Forum Index and have a look. Under what category (National and International Business Standards?) you think it belongs under.

That would be the best fit, and where new participants would tend to look for it, in my opinion.

And I need a title. Maybe "Hospital & Health Care Provider Quality Systems"? That might fit in the "Manufacturing and Service Process Topics and Business Systems Processes" category.

That would work, given the next point.

Then again, if JCAHO and NCAIO are businesses specializing in ISO 9001 implementation in health care (...)

NCAIO is such a business, and if they succeed there probably will be others. JCAHO is not...the JCAHO system is totally unlike ISO 9001.

JCAHO doesn't require that a hospital have a Quality System in the sense we use that term here. Instead, it mandates specific methods of doing specific health care tasks, based on study-group determinations of Best Practices across the health care provider business.

That's part of the reason why the JCAHO vs. ISO 9001 question is interesting...because the two approaches are so radically different from each other.

[MIREGMGR]

Proposal:

Title = Hospitals & Healthcare Providers: "Best Practices" and ISO 9001

This title appropriately defines the scope, and will attract posts pertaining both to particular healthcare quality-system implementation questions and to comparisons between the different system types.

Subtitle = JCAHO, CCHSA, HQA, ANAES, JSQua, ACHS, NZCHS, MSQH, NCAIO

This will maximize Cove findability worldwide via external search engine. The first eight are "best practices" accreditation organizations, in the US, Canada, UK, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia respectively. The last is the newly CMS-approved (in the USA) accreditation organization for ISO 9001 based hospital quality systems.

Category = National and International Business Standards.

ISO 9001 of course is an international standard. So, informally but effectively, is the JCAHO-developed "best practices" approach, if one judges by the percentage of applicable organizations that have chosen to conform their operations accordingly. Thus this topic fits National and International Business Standards.

[Marc]

Works for me. Any other comments from anyone?