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Mary Washington Hospital has been accredited after its first unannounced Joint Commission inspection Date published: 10/25/2007
BY JIM HALL When hospital employees arrived for work on a Monday morning in mid-June, they heard an intercom announcement that they had long expected. "Mary Washington Hospital is happy to welcome our Joint Commission surveyors," the operator said. The announcement was an alert to everyone that D-Day had arrived. Inspectors were in the building. Every three years the Fredericksburg hospital submits to an inspection by a team from the Chicago-based Joint Commission. The organization has been inspecting the nation's hospital's for more than 50 years. Its accreditation is prized, in part because government and private insurance plans insist on it. In the past, Joint Commission inspections were scheduled ahead of time, and hospitals were able to prepare for them. It was as if "company's coming and you're making yourself look good," said Eileen L. Dohmann, vice president for nursing. But last year the commission switched to unannounced inspections in hopes of seeing hospital operations as they really are. Mary Washington officials knew they were due for an inspection, but because of this change, didn't know until that morning in June when it would occur. "You didn't get to cram for the test," said Kevin Van Renan, senior vice president. A seven-person team consisting of doctors, nurses and former administrators spent a week at the hospital, going throughout the building. Dohmann said their message to the executives who followed them was: "We'll tell you what we want to see." The team talked to staff and patients, inspected charts and examined written policies. They also used a "tracer" method of tracking patients throughout their stays. Dohmann said one of the surveyors found a patient in the emergency department who had come to the hospital with chest pain. The surveyor tracked the man from the ER to his room in the hospital, to treatment in the cardiac catheterization lab, and finally to discharge. At each stop, the surveyor quizzed the staff about hospital policies, about how the man was treated, and about how they transferred information about him to others in the chain. "I think it's a much better methodology than what they used in the past," Van Renan said. At the end of the week, the surveyors met with executives and praised the hospital, calling Mary Washington "very, very, very good," Van Renan said.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 10/25/2007
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