JCAHO to Treat Hospital Data as Public Utility

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' recent forays into "commercialization of data" won't be continued, JCAHO President Dennis O'Leary said. Instead, the JCAHO would treat its database of hospital performance information as a public utility, free to any organization or individual wanting access. In the meantime, the JCAHO will convene within the next two months a meeting of various stakeholders to discuss exactly how to make the data available. Dr. O'Leary said the JCAHO board at a meeting this past weekend voted to launch the industry-wide discussion about the data. The JCAHO dropped a plan to sell performance data to third-party payers in November 2005 after the hospital industry complained about possible privacy violations and other issues. The JCAHO also had planned to provide hospital-specific performance reports to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association -- But in December 2005, the JCAHO notified hospitals that the Blues association had terminated the contract.