The Joint Commission's ongoing professional practice evaluation process: costly, ineffective, and potentially harmful to safety culture.
Accreditation by organizations such as The Joint Commission (TJC) is intended to improve quality of care and patient safety. This study investigates the costs associated with the TJC requirement, Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE), which supports early detection of provider performance issues. The number of providers subject to OPPE, labor hours, and estimated labor costs were pooled from six large healthcare systems. Annual costs per provider are estimated at $50, extrapolated to $78.54 million for all US providers.