Advocate Heath/Joint Commission Collaboration to Enhance Patient Safety and Quality of Care

Advocate Health—based in Charlotte, N.C., and Chicago—and The Joint Commission have announced a collaboration to enhance patient safety and quality of care across the health system’s hospitals. The Joint Commission enables and affirms the highest standards of healthcare quality and patient safety for all by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.

This collaboration aims to drive impactful change by using performance data for continuous improvement to propel innovation and create efficiencies.

Through systemwide hospital accreditation, Advocate Health, one of the largest nonprofit integrated health systems in the United States, is setting a new industry standard in providing consistent, high-quality care across all its facilities—building on its longstanding legacy of excellence. These efforts reflect the organization’s continued dedication to delivering the safest, highest-quality care to its patients and communities.

Among other advantages, taking a systemwide approach to accreditation enables hospital-to-hospital comparisons within the Advocate Health system, as well as comparisons to peer groups with the same demographic profile. The Joint Commission’s benchmarking tool, available to all its accredited hospitals, offers a system-level and hospital-specific view, allowing health care professionals to easily validate areas of high performance and target areas of opportunity.

“When hospitals and clinics deliver higher quality care, people get to spend more time where it matters most — with their families, loved ones, and in the work they find meaningful,” said Advocate Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Betty Chu. “By aligning our organization around a unified set of evidence-based standards, we’re empowering our entire team to drive improvements for all.”

“Together, The Joint Commission and Advocate Health are committed to improving patient safety and quality of care,” says Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, PhD, president and chief executive officer, The Joint Commission. “A systemwide approach to accreditation is best for health systems to deliver safe and quality care, which in turn benefits patients, the workforce and communities. We look forward to working with Advocate Health to build resilient health care, enable continuous improvement, and share data, insights and experiences to advance health outcomes.”