Profession
New president for Joint Commission
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Aug. 20, 2007
Joint Commission officials announced in late July that Dennis S. O'Leary, MD, will retire in December after 21 years as president of the health care organization accrediting body. Mark R. Chassin, MD, chair of the health policy department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York is set to take over the presidency Jan. 1.
Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Chassin served from 1992 to 1994 as commissioner of the New York State Dept. of Health. He also is a member of the Institute of Medicine and co-chaired its National Roundtable on Health Care Quality.
"My aim will be to accelerate the pace of improvement in a major way by enhancing the scope of our programs," Dr. Chassin said at a news conference. "The Joint Commission can be a leader in the movement to transform health care so every patient in every setting receives the safest, highest quality care consistently."
The biggest organizational challenge will be in helping physicians and hospitals put into practice the accumulated quality and safety evidence, he said.
"We often know what the right things to do are, but too often the problem is we don't have highly reliable processes of care that produce those results for every patient, every day," Dr. Chassin said.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/08/20/prbf0820.htm.
