The Joint Commission is looking for a new president and CEO, following the February announcement that Dr. Mark Chassin will end his 14-year stint at the end of 2021.
The accreditor said in a statement provided to Modern Healthcare that Chassin has been an extraordinary leader who raised the value of accreditation
"Dr. Chassin will be leaving The Joint Commission when his current contract ends at the end of 2021," the statement read. "He has also led the organization through the worst pandemic in a century, leaving it well positioned for the future. Dr. Chassin will not be retiring and plans to continue to pursue endeavors in quality improvement, high reliability health care and patient safety."
An earlier statement published on the Joint Commission's website was largely made under the radar. The statement said the board had begun the search process for Chassin's successor.
In a position specification written by the executive search firm, Russell Reynolds, the Joint Commission said it was looking for:
- The incoming executive to develop better relationships with CMS and other governmental agencies.
- Someone with experience in healthcare quality and safety across all levels of care, who can make difficult business decisions guided by their mission.
- An incoming president who would be responsible for the financial well-being and strategy of not just the accreditation arm, but also for products and solutions arm the Center for Transforming Healthcare and quality improvement consulting wholly owned affiliate Joint Commission Resources.
- Someone who will develop business opportunities that keep in mind how quality and patient safety are developing.
The search comes after a tumultuous 2020 for the accreditation agency. CMS last July granted a two-year approval for its hospital program, versus the usual six years, citing concerns that the Joint Commission's survey process wasn't similar to CMS', and questioned its performance.
The Joint Commission had to make several changes to its survey process before it was even approved by CMS for two years, including not interviewing front-line workers in the presence of supervisors, not using leading questions during interviews and training surveyors differently to review medical records.
The Joint Commission is the nation's largest hospital accreditor, estimated to survey about 80% of hospitals for Medicare participation.
CMS also in 2020 questioned the ethics of the organization selling consulting services to the hospitals that it's also tasked with accrediting. Former CMS Administrator Seema Verma called it a "glaring conflict of interest."
In response the Joint Commission said the consulting and accreditation business operated completely separate and doesn't allow surveyors to be consultants.
The group also got faced scrutiny after the Wall Street Journal found just 1% of facilities that violated Medicare requirements lost accreditation in 2014.
In an interview with Modern Healthcare in 2017, Chassin said the survey process is only about determining compliance, and that surveyors are trained to not be punitive.
"Our mission is to improve safety and quality, it's not to figure out how many deficiencies an organization has," Chassin said. "When our board reframed our mission in 2009, we realized that the only way we could achieve our mission of improving safety and quality is to do a very thorough and objective evaluation, present the organization with opportunities to improve, and do that in a way that engages the organization so they take in that information and use it to change the way they provide care. That's how care improves."
Chassin's predecessor, Dr. Dennis O'Leary, served a 22-year stint.
