Being Ready for TJC Survey

As we get closer to having our accreditation surveys from both Joint Commission and the Washington Department of Health we want to provide some helpful reminders to prepare for these visits. Surveys require a lot of coordinated effort from a dedicated team to work with the surveyors, but we rely on our leaders and team in each service area to make Valley’s surveys successful.

During each day of the survey, we will have a Survey Command set up to coordinate all our activities with the surveyors. The surveyors need to see a lot of documents, records, policies, and data. Also, they will need to talk with some staff for clarifications they may need. To manage all these various requests we want to ensure that everything flows through Survey Command.

For example, if a surveyor asks for a policy, don’t print it out and provide it to them. Each surveyor will always have a member of our Survey Command with them when they are walking around. One of the tasks of our team is to record the requests and ensure we track each of these through Survey Command. We’ll manage these requests so that you don’t have to.

Some of us have been through too many surveys to count while some will be going through this for the first time. How we interact with the surveyors can make a significant difference for these survey outcomes. Here are a few tips to remember for survey:

• Relax! These surveys happen all the time and give us a chance to learn and improve. If a surveyor is observing you, just do what you normally do each day. If a surveyor wants to speak to you, answer them professionally and honestly and “manage up” your team’s work.
• When speaking to a surveyor, answer only the questions they ask. They have a lot of places to go and information to process, so help them by keeping your answers concise and only on the topic of exactly what they ask.
• If you are asked something you don’t know, no worries! If you don’t know the answer, tell them how you would find the answer such as asking a colleague, going to our policies page, or referring to one of your professional resources or manuals.
• Remember never to argue with a surveyor. Let your team in Survey Command take care of those discussions for you.

If you have any questions or think a process or service area needs a quick review, please reach out to Jon Scallan, interim RACM at 6427 or email at jon_scallan@valleymed.org. Also, you can visit the MyValley page and under the Learn tab is the Accreditation and Certification resources page with lots of helpful info to prepare for survey.