The Joint Commission unveils new telehealth accreditation program

The Joint Commission is launching a new accreditation program for telehealth, effective July 1, 2024.

The program will provide updated telehealth service standards for healthcare organizations using the care modality. These standards will detail the structures and processes needed to deliver high-quality virtual care. The accreditation program is open to organizations using telehealth and organizations that have written agreements to provide care via telehealth to another organization’s patients.

The new accreditation requirements cover various facets of telehealth operations, including leadership, human resources, emergency management, information management, provision of care, record of care, and patient rights. For instance, the requirements include new guidelines for provider and patient education on using telehealth technologies.

The program’s standards may also be filtered based on telehealth modality or service.

“The use of telehealth in the United States increased 154 percent during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and stabilized at levels 38 times higher than levels in 2019,” said Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, PhD, president and CEO of The Joint Commission enterprise, in a press release. “As telehealth continues to evolve, it was imperative to create a new accreditation program to provide a framework to support the integrity of patient safety regardless of the care setting. Our new Telehealth Accreditation Program helps organizations standardize care and reduce risk so that all patients, including those obtaining services remotely, receive the safest, highest-quality care with outcomes consistent with traditional settings.”

The new accreditation will replace telehealth and technology-based products in The Joint Commission’s Ambulatory Health Care and Behavioral Health Care and Human Services accreditation programs.

This announcement comes a few months after the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) launched its virtual care accreditation pilot program. This accreditation will highlight organizations using virtual modalities to identify care gaps, provide high-quality care, and track and report outcomes.

The NCQA selected 18 organizations for the pilot, including healthcare providers, healthcare payers, federally qualified health centers, and virtual-first/virtual-only organizations. The organizations will provide input to guide the development of the accreditation. Some of the organizations participating are Blue Shield of California, ChristianaCare, CirrusMD, and MDLive.

The 10-month pilot program will include learning, testing, preparation, and evaluation phases. An early adopter program and the accreditation are slated to launch in mid-to-late 2024.

These accreditation programs underscore the enduring adoption and use of telehealth in the US healthcare system.

Research recently published in JAMA Network Open reveals that many patients chose telehealth even when in-person care was widely available in 2022. The cross-sectional study used data on 5,437 patients from the 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS).

The researchers found that 2,384 patients (43 percent) reported participating in one or more visits through telehealth in 2022. They further noted that having chronic conditions, seeking multiple healthcare visits, and being female significantly increased the odds of having any telehealth visits.

As telehealth becomes embedded in healthcare delivery, lawmakers have been debating the future of telehealth policy and regulations.

In a House subcommittee hearing earlier this month, US representatives noted their support of solidifying pandemic-era flexibilities that expanded access to telehealth. However, they also underlined the importance of maintaining telehealth care quality and health equity in new policy actions, seeking input from various witnesses, including virtual care leaders from three healthcare provider organizations.