Medical Staff Alert: Joint Commission delays MS.1.20 decision

The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) Board of Commissioners followed the recommendation of a task force it assigned to review revisions to standard MS.1.20 and agreed to suspend the revised standard, according to a June 2 AHA News Now article.

If MS.1.20 is approved with no further changes, hospitals will need to roll documents that had previously been kept in separate manuals into their medical staff bylaws and allow the medical staff to bypass the medical executive committee (MEC) and submit petitions directly to the governing board if it feels that the MEC is not representing its best interests. The revised standard was scheduled to go into effect January 1, 2009.

The Board of Commissioners granted the task force more time to organize a report on its full recommendations, which it will present to the board at its August meeting.