The Joint Commission’s work mirrors broader health care trends. Read our interview.

The Center for Transforming Healthcare was established in 2009 as a separate 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission. We talked with Joint Commission President Dr. Mark Chassin about how the Center is working with hospitals and health systems to address their most pressing problems in quality of care and patient safety.

• Ernst & Young: How did the Center for Transforming Healthcare come to be?
• Mark Chassin: What we heard from our customers was this: knowing what the problems were wasn’t enough. They wanted to know how to solve them. This led to the creation of the Center and its mission to address high-impact, industry-wide issues.
• Ernst & Young: How do you disseminate what you’ve found to your health care customers?
• Mark Chassin: We’re delivering solutions to customers in three ways. First, we have created an online information portal where accredited organizations can log in and engage in step-by step, problem-solving processes. Second, our surveyors, who conduct over 7,000 surveys a year in the US, are actively involved in coaching and educating, infusing what they have learned from the organizations they have visited. Third, we have created a leading-practice library that is widely available to our accredited customers.
• Ernst & Young: In the quest to instill a culture of safety, what should board members be asking their CEOs?
• Mark Chassin: One of the most effective questions board members can ask is this: “Tell me about the most recent close call we had here at the hospital — what did we learn from it, and what did we do to fix the problem?”