Welcome to Part I of a 5-part series diving into the Joint Commission Healthcare Staffing Services certification Leadership Standards. Well, that is certainly a mouth full! But, I hope that this series will help guide you through one of the more complicated standards in preparation for JCHCSS surveys.
With over 30 years of experience in the clinical field, and leading over 50 companies to achieve JCHCSS certification, I enjoy mentoring clients through these tricky standards. To find out more about my background, check out Prophecy’s Healthcare Consulting Services page.
The Leadership Standard is broken down into 9 goals. This first part in the series is going to cover an overview of the Leadership Standard as well as the first goal itself HSLD.1.
Leadership Standard Overview
According to the Joint Commission, the healthcare staffing services (HCSS) firm needs to clearly define leadership roles.
- Leaders involved in HCSS development and oversight either have background, experience, training, licensure and/or certification or provide the organization access to resources with appropriate expertise.
- Firm clearly defines its leaders’ accountability
- Leaders set goals, develop plans and manage the firm’s performance measurement and improvement activities.
All this boils down to wanting to understand who the leaders are and what skills/experience they bring to the table.
- Staffing experience?
- Healthcare management experience?
- Financial experience?
- Clinical experience?
Your leadership team should have the expertise to lead the organization. So, what if no one on your leadership team comes from a healthcare or clinical background? Then, how does your leadership team make resources available to fill in the gap in knowledge?
- Clinical Director
- Clinical Liaison
- Clinical Consultant
HSLD.1
To assure the firm has an effective framework for supporting quality staffing services
- Clearly defined Leadership roles
- Sound business practices
- Risk management processes
- Productive relationships with clients and employees
- Maintaining effective communication
- Emergency management processes
Dissecting this first goal sets up the purpose behind the Leadership Standard. The Joint Commission surveyors want to understand the leaders’ roles in the day-to-day operations of your organization. From planning and implementing to evaluating and improving performance, what quality measures do your leaders have in place to fulfill their responsibilities?
One side note to Internal Personnel Files (frequently requested by surveyors) is that there are no standards that say what needs to be in each personnel files, but they should be kept standard across the organization.
In addition, the only file that I have seen requested of an organization is that of the clinical representative. With that being said, if you have an RN in a supervisory role, you definitely want to have a copy of his/her license and verification readily accessible!
I hope this first part in this series provided you with a bit more information regarding the Leadership Standard and HCSS.1. Look for the next part in the series to discuss HCSS.2 & 3 in the next few weeks. And, please list any comments/questions below that you might have regarding the Leadership Standard or JCHCSS Certification in general.
We welcome everyone to join our Webinar Series titled “Joint Commission Health Care Staffing Certification Made Easy.” For topics and times, visit the sign-up page!
Photo courtesy of:
Adie Reed on Flickr “Canada Geese”
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