Joint Commission announces EC standards deletions

As part of the Joint Commission’s Project REFRESH, a process undertaken to modernize the accreditation process and demonstrate the relationship of standards to patient safety, deletions of several Environment of Care (EC) standards went into effect on July 1, including:

• EC.01.01.01 EP2: Intervention authority (Rationale: implicit in EP 1, the appointment of the safety officer).
• EC.02.01.03 EP4: Indoor smoking areas (Rationale: duplicative of EP 1, policy prohibiting smoking).
• EC.02.03.01 EP 2: Indoor smoking risks (Rationale: duplicative of EP 1, minimizing the risk of harm from fire, smoke and the products of combustion).
• EC.02.04.01 EP 1: Input on medical equipment purchases (Rationale: left to organization discretion).
• EC.02.05.07 EP 9: Protective measures following generator test failure (Rationale: part of regular operations).
• EC.02.05.07 EP 10: Retest following generator test failure (Rationale: part of regular operations).
• EC.04.01.03 EP 3: Performance improvement recommendation (Rationale: implicit in other Elements of Performance of the standard, which include composition of the Environment of Care Committee and data analysis).
• EC.04.01.05 EP 3: Reporting performance improvement results (Rationale: left to organization discretion).

Because the rationale for some of these deletions relates to the fact that the process is inherent in other standards or assumed to be part of the organization’s routine practice, consider carefully any modifications to existing processes.

Further deletions will be made under Project REFRESH next year, and another round in the future.