The United States health care system is under a period of rapid change. Managed care growth, technological changes, and a growing population is forcing the American health system to reform and change its traditional healthcare model. With the rapid changes in the healthcare system, oversight of these changes will be crucial to ensure compliance. Health care providers will be facing challenges and pressures on implementing the changes from reform. Ensuring that the changes brought from reform are followed and evaluated will ensure the American public is receiving health care from providers that is safe, effective, and appropriate. Third-party oversight to health care providers in the United States will need to be performed. In order for reform to take place, healthcare organizations will need to obtain accreditation from an accrediting organization that has been approved to accredit health care organizations by the United States Government. Failure to comply or seek accreditation will result in the loss of licensure to perform health care and payments form Medicare and Medicaid will be suspended.
             An existing third-party overseer for healthcare organizations today is the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO). The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits nearly 20,000 health care organizations in the United States. An independent, not-for-profit organization, the Joint Commission is the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care since 1951 (JCAHO,2000). In order for an organization to earn and maintain accreditation, an organization must undergo an on-site survey by a Joint Commission surveyor at least every three years. Laboratories seeking accreditation must be surveyed every two years (JCAHO, 2000). Organizations are provided with a standard manual with applying for accreditation. This manual contains over 350 standards that health care organizations must meet to ...