Certification for Disease-Specific Care Programs

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the US among payors, purchasers of healthcare benefits, providers, policy-makers and the public in the promise of disease management or disease-specific care. While there have been early efforts to standardize the application and measurement of disease-specific care programs, no national standards or uniform performance measurement specifications existed prior to 2002. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (Illinois, USA) published its national standards and conducted its first certification evaluation for disease-specific care in February 2002. The Disease-Specific Care (DSC) Certification Program is fundamentally based on an evaluation of a disease-specific care program’s compliance with the Joint Commission’s standards, implementation of adherence to clinical practice guidelines and its outcomes of care. Organizations that have achieved Joint Commission DSC Certification have reported impressive results from their performance measurement and improvement activities.