An investigation in The Wall Street Journal discovered The Joint Commission rarely downgrades an accredited healthcare facility once it awards its "Gold Seal of Approval," ARS Technica reports.
Here's what you should know:
1. Hundreds of Joint Commission-accredited hospitals across the U.S. have federal safety violations but still boast accreditation.
2. The Joint Commission revoked the accreditation of less than one percent of all organizations that "ran into trouble" with federal regulators in 2014.
3. Approximately 30 accredited hospitals had violations the government said could cause injury or death to patients, yet these organizations retained accreditation.
4. The Wall Street Journal compiled a database of violation and accreditation data. In 2014, 250 hospitals that were accredited had CMS violations. Sixty percent of those hospitals also had violations three years before and around 33 percent had violations in 2015 and 2016 as well.
5. Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University researcher Ashish Jha, MD, PhD, said to ARS, the data "shows accreditation is basically meaningless — it doesn’t mean a hospital is safe."