Commitment to Quality and Safety
Accreditation
UC Davis Medical Center earned accreditation from the oldest and largest hospital health standards-setting organization in the U.S.
What Accreditation Means
UC Davis Medical Center is accredited by The Joint Commission, an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising the level of safety and quality of health care. Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission is the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.
The health care industry considers accreditation a symbol of quality, and The Joint Commission the nation’s predominant health standards-setting body. It accredits and certifies more than 22,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States.
Accreditation is essentially a kind of inventory of operational systems and procedures that the Joint Commission believes are critical to the safety and quality of patient care at a hospital. Joint Commission standards address a hospital’s performance in specific areas, and lay out requirements to help ensure that patient care is provided in a safe manner and in a secure environment.
The Joint Commission develops its standards in consultation with health care experts, providers, researchers, measurement experts, purchasers and consumers. Its governing board includes physicians, administrators, nurses, employers, quality experts, a consumer advocate and educators.
Accreditation is voluntary, and supplements mandatory government licensure and certification.
How Accreditation Works
The Joint Commission uses a wide range of standards for hospital accreditation concerning a wide variety of topics, such as:
- Educating patients and upholding patient rights
- Controlling and preventing infections
- Managing medications
- Preventing medical errors
- How the hospital verifies that its doctors, nurses, and other staff are qualified and competent
- How it prepares for emergencies
- How it collects data on its performance and uses that data to improve itself
The commission issues a customized list of standards and systems for hospital staff to check their operations against. Hospitals submit reports to the commission for review and consideration, and undergo on-site surveys and inspections that may last a week.
Joint Commission standards are updated regularly to reflect the rapid advances in health care and medicine.
How UC Davis Medical Center Maintains Accreditation
To keep its accreditation, UC Davis Medical Center must also take measures such as:
- Performing focused standards assessment with action plans to address any compliance issues.
- Submitting to unannounced on-site surveys a minimum of once every three years.
- Joint Commission surveyors are highly trained experts who are doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, laboratory medical technologists, and other health care professionals.
- During the survey, surveyors select patients randomly and use their medical records as a roadmap to evaluate standards compliance.
- As surveyors trace a patient’s experience in a health care organization, they talk to the doctors, nurses, and other staff who interacted with the patient.
- Surveyors also observe doctors and nurses providing care, and often speak to the patients themselves.
How to Report Problems or Concerns
As a patient, you can make your care safer by being an active and informed member of your health care team. Being involved and asking questions is the basis of The Joint Commission’s Speak Up campaign. It’s a national initiative to maintain and increase safety by encouraging patients to actively engage in their care plan.
Please tell us if you have care or safety concerns that we haven’t addressed to your satisfaction.
- Contact medical center management through UC Davis Medical Center’s Patient Relations department at 916-734-9777 or 800-305-6540.
- Additionally, you may also contact The Joint Commission directly to report a patient safety concern or file a complaint.