Accreditation status insufficient indicator of quality. (Short Takes News at Deadline).

Does a hospital's accreditation by the JCAHO guarantee that its patients receive high quality care?

The answer is a resounding, "No," according to a new study published in the journal Quality Management in Health Care. Researchers concluded that the Joint Commission relies too much on surveys and that it does not give enough weight to such performance measures as mortality and complication rates or a hospital's ability to implement the most current treatments.

The study found that even hospitals with higher than average mortality and morbidity rates had often received favorable accreditations from the Commission.

A spokesperson for the Joint Commission sharply disputed these conclusions, saying that the Commission does indeed take such factors into account This new study comes on the heels of other assessments that have been sharply critical of the Commission.

In 1999, a report by the Office of Inspector General concluded that the accreditation system was "unlikely to detect substandard patterns of care or individual practitioners with questionable skills."

James A. Hawkins is a health care writer based in Aiken, S.C. He can be reached by phone at 803/414-2062 or by e-mail at [e-mail].