In This Section
The Joint Commission
Background
The Joint Commission is an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. SNMMI works with The Joint Commission on a variety of issues.
On September 24, 2013 the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging submitted comments to The Joint Commission on their proposed changes to diagnostic imaging services. While the comments provided reference the “Hospital Accreditation Program” standards, they are intended to be utilized for ambulatory care and critical access hospital accreditation program, when like areas are repeated.
Current Status
On September 3, 2014 TJC released Proposed Revisions to Diagnostic Imaging Services. These revisions would change the standards that are essential to nuclear medicine and, if approved, could have a detrimental effect on the industry as a whole.
TJC’s Proposed Revisions (Standards 19 and 21):
- Would remove technologists certified by the Nuclear Medicine Technology Certification Board (NMTCB) from the list of technologists qualified to perform stand-alone diagnostic computed tomography (CT) exams; and
- Could result in problems with being allowed to perform single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) combined with CT and PET combined with CT
SNMMI’s comments to The Joint Committee, which were submitted on October 17, can be found here.