Jersey Shore University Medical Center One of First Hospitals in US to Receive The Joint Commissions Health Care Equity Certification
What You Need To Know
Jersey Shore University Medical Center is one of the first hospitals in the nation to earn a Health Care Equity Certification from The Joint Commission. The certification indicates Hackensack Meridian Health's extensive efforts to address and improve healthcare equity across its network.
To become certified, The Joint Commission requires health systems to have formalized structures in place to improve health equity across their facilities and serve as community collaborators to address areas of need. Organizations seeking this designation must collect, analyze, and act on data points relating to patient care, patient communication, socioeconomic information, staff education, and policies on various topics, including recruitment and retention.
In August, Hackensack Meridian’s Hackensack University Medical Center became the first hospital in the U.S. to earn the Health Care Equity Certification from the Joint Commission.
Jersey Shore University Medical Center underwent a rigorous onsite review to receive the certification. During the visit, a team of Joint Commission surveyors evaluated over 40 program-specific standards and a range of data points, including the following:
- Three quality and/or safety measures for priority clinical conditions by sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., cardiovascular outcomes, cesarean birth rates for nulliparous women with term, singleton baby in vertex position [NTSV], hospital-acquired conditions, pressure injury rates, etc.)
- Comparison of the race, ethnicity, and languages spoken by staff and leaders to the race, ethnicity, and languages spoken by the community
- Employee opinion survey/culture of safety survey results stratified by race, ethnicity, and language information
- Health Care Equity performance improvement plan
Hackensack Meridian Health invited members of its senior leadership team, administrative teams, and clinical care leaders to participate in the certification review.
The Joint Commission is an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits more than 22,000 healthcare organizations and healthcare programs in the United States.
Read more about the Health Care Equity Certification here.