Learn our Lingo (LOL): Earning accreditation

You can earn extra “credit” in this month’s edition of LOL!

That’s because Headlines is focusing on accrediting bodies and the importance they play in the health care industry.

For instance, earlier this year, the organization underwent a wide-ranging, week-long mock survey carried out by The Joint Commission (TJC). The survey was designed to test Michigan Medicine’s readiness for the next TJC survey — which measures how adequately the organization meets quality and patient safety standards.

The next TJC site visit — which is typically carried out every three years — will likely be held in late 2018 or early 2019.

But TJC is only one of a number of outside organizations that Michigan Medicine partners with to ensure the organization remains among the best in carrying out patient care, education and research.

Here’s a look at a few of them:

• ACCME: The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. The ACCME is the accreditation body for organizations that provide continuing medical education credits (CME). According to its website, in order for an institution to earn accreditation, it must “meet requirements for delivering independent CME that accelerates learning, change and improvement in health care.”

• ACGME: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The ACGME carries out regular Clinical Learning Environment Reviews (CLER) every 18-24 months. The most recent CLER site visit at Michigan Medicine took place earlier this summer and measured the organization’s ability to prepare residents and fellows to enter the workforce.

• ANCC: American Nurses Credentialing Center. The ANCC certifies hospitals across the U.S. with Magnet recognition, meaning the facilities meet rigorous standards for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. Only six percent of hospitals across the country are Magnet certified, including Michigan Medicine, which earned the recognition in 2017.
• LCME: Liaison Committee on Medical Education. Medical education programs leading to the M.D. degree in the U.S. and Canada are accredited by the LCME, which has a scope limited to complete and independent medical education programs whose students are geographically located in and are operated by universities or medical schools chartered in those two countries. LCME accreditation is a voluntary, peer-reviewed process of quality assurance that determines whether the medical education program meets established standards. This process also fosters institutional and programmatic improvement.

• TJC: The Joint Commission. TJC is the oldest accrediting body and currently certifies more than 21,000 hospitals nationwide. In addition to overall hospital reviews, TJC also reviews ambulatory care settings and provides disease-specific care certifications (such as stroke).

Next time one of these reviews take please, all you need to do is review this LOL to understand who’s visiting the academic medical center and why!

Are there other acronyms you’ve always wondered about? Let us know and they could be featured in the next LOL!

For a complete list of past acronyms highlighted in Headlines, click here.