Stephens Co. Hospital Total Joint Program to Pursue Certification

Stephens County Hospital will pursue a special recognition for one of its programs.

Hospital Administrator Lynne Anderson said that representatives from the Joint Commission will be in Toccoa next month to review the hospital’s Total Joint Program.

Anderson said that Stephens County Hospital is pursuing a separate and special certification for that program.

“Dr. Vaughn has worked really hard with us to standardize the procedures for our total joints, work on our length of stay, the pre-operative assessment, the education for the patients, and we can voluntarily go to Joint Commission and say we want to have a special certification for this particular procedure and that is what we have done,” said Anderson.

Anderson said the total joint program refers to things like hips, knees, and shoulders.

“We will see in the literature where people that have had pain, or they have had problems with their knees over the years and they have not been able to improve that through physical therapy, things like that, then they will go in and have a procedure where all of the joint is removed and replaced with a prosthetic joint and then after the surgery, they will do some more physical rehab and they have been really good with perfecting this procedure so people will have really good outcomes,” said Anderson.

An independent, not-for-profit organization, the Joint Commission says on its website that it accredits and certifies nearly 21,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States.

Regarding total joint programs, the Joint Commission says it looks for three things in certification.

Those are compliance with consensus-based national standards, effective and consistent use of appropriate, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the hip, knee, or shoulder replacement patient population, and collection and analysis of a minimum of four performance measures specific to the hip, knee, or shoulder replacement patient population.

Anderson said a lot of work has gone into preparing for the Joint Commission’s April 8 visit on the Total Joint Program.

This is not the only time the Joint Commission will visit Stephens County Hospital this year.

Anderson said that the commission will be returning in the coming months for the hospital’s regular re-accreditation.

“We are actually on target to have that done sometime between now and August,” said Anderson. “Those are unannounced and we have already received our notice and our agenda for that, which means that we are on their radar,” said Anderson.

Stephens County Hospital was last re-accredited in September 2013.