Cascade Community Healthcare Receives Gold Seal of Approval From The Joint Commission

By Owen Sexton  / owen@chronline.com

Following a rigorous on site inspection conducted at the beginning of June, Cascade Community Healthcare (CCH) has been awarded The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for its behavioral and ambulatory health care.

President and CEO of CCH Richard Stride explained what the gold seal means for patients receiving treatment at CCH now.

“If you have this accreditation, it means that quality care has been ensured for patients under our care. There are other organizations out there doing accreditations, but The Joint Commission is the gold standard in the industry,” Stride said.

The benefits of a Joint Commission accreditation go beyond just affecting patients. Stride stated that because of this, CCH will now only have to be reinspected every other year by The Joint Commission, as opposed to seeing multiple inspections by the Washington State Department of Health every year.

“We’ll also be able to negotiate for better health care reimbursement rates when it comes to government assistance,” Stride said.

Getting the gold seal was no easy process, either. Stride initially began working on it back in 2015, though most of the work happened in the past two years. Multiple inspections were conducted and CCH had to adjust many of their procedures.

“The commission let us know ahead of time what they were looking for so we had time to prepare. We would get inspected, they would let us know what our deficiencies were, then we would fix them and wait to be reinspected,” Stride said.

Inspectors from The Joint Commission can still come in and perform random “spot checks,” but the main reevaluations will occur every other year, according to Stride.

“We commend Cascade Community Healthcare for its continuous quality improvement efforts in patient safety and quality of care,” said Mark Pelletier, COO of accreditation and certification operations for The Joint Commission, in a CCH press release.

The Joint Commission aims to improve patient care by ensuring health care providers meet their standards for safety and quality. The standards help health care providers establish consistent care guidelines and reduce the risk of errors occurring.

For more information on CCH and the services it provides, visit its website at https://cascadecommunityhealthcare.org/. More information about The Joint Commission can be found at https://www.jointcommission.org/.