COLA and Joint Commission

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Anyone else out there COLA accredited at a Joint Commission affiliated site and got the letter from COLA about the changes??

16 Replies

Ken Charpie

Thu Dec 08, 2022 at 1:18PM

I sure wish that was our situation. COLA was great when I dealt with them.
I'm guessing JCAHO is putting pressure on COLA to get more strict. Is that the case?

Danyel Olson

Thu Dec 08, 2022 at 1:23PM

The letter states: The Joint Commission has terminated the long-standing cooperative agreement between TJC and COLA. This means that TJC may no longer recognize COLA accreditation of your laboratory.

There's no details and I cannot find any statement from TJC. I agree - COLA is great. I have been very happy with their services.

Carol Brown

Thu Dec 08, 2022 at 1:23PM

I just found out that we received notification as well. Has anyone talked with COLA or Joint Commission? I wonder if this is like a "Dish Network" or "Direct TV" dispute where they are having contractual disagreement and they threaten to cut services if an agreement can't be made. Maybe it is not a "for-sure" situation and there is hope that resolution can be found???? Just a hope.....

Ken Charpie

Thu Dec 08, 2022 at 1:26PM

I am unsurprised. My experiences with JCAHO border on the nightmarish. But JCAHO sure is making me learn about detaching emotionally from this job.

It's like the parents are fighting. I think COLA is the Disney Land Dad and divorce is being threatened.

Danyel Olson

Thu Dec 08, 2022 at 2:21PM

I heard from someone who contacted Joint Commission. Their statement is supposed to come out this afternoon or tomorrow.

Peggy Mann

Fri Dec 09, 2022 at 8:32AM

Hi folks - we don't use COLA for waived testing (or nonwaived) so I am ignorant of TJC-COLA connection yet very interested.

From outsider (me) it looks like the issue is TJC doing your entire health system/hospital accreditation and (before the statement) did not look at 'lab' which COLA was accrediting for CLIA labs who engaged them/paid for COLA inspections. Is this statement related to the TJC WT Chapter only? Or nonwaived is also included in TJC 'won't accept COLA as acceptable accreditation'?

I thought it was CMS/CLIA that determined the deemed accreditations.

Appreciate the thread and hope you keep posting as it unfolds and hopefully resolves on a manner that works out for your/your POC labs.

Kathleen David

Wed Dec 14, 2022 at 10:24AM

I've seen the notification sent to our hospital system from TJC. Basically, they are giving any COLA-accredited sites within the system 2 years to find another accrediting agency. I really like COLA, and am not happy about having to make a change. We have 3 (soon to be 4) ED/UC sites with both waived and nonwaived testing that are under COLA. Not sure what we'll go with. I'm not sure why this is happening, but it would be great if there wasn't a minor crisis every month!

Peggy Mann

Wed Dec 14, 2022 at 10:34AM

Gosh Kathleen, couldn't you sweet talk all your hospitals in to dropping TJC as their hospital accreditation and picking up a different hospital accreditation?
Yeah NOPE, I can't imagine that will end up a viable option for any POCC who wants to keep using COLA but their institution/healthsystem is accreditated by TJC.

Ashlee Holland

Tue Dec 20, 2022 at 11:50AM

Anyone have any ideas on what their facilities will be changing to? We only use COLA for one site and they only perform 1 moderate complexity test. COLA has been great for us to deal with for this and I am not looking forward to finding another accrediting agency.

Kathleen David

Tue Dec 20, 2022 at 11:59AM

We will look at either CLIA or CAP for the 3 (soon to be 4) sites that have COLA and TJC. I'm leaning towards CAP. I really don't like the way that CLIA does their deficiency notifications and how the responses need to be done. We have all of our POCT under CAP in the hospitals, so are very familiar with it. However, it's not my decision alone, so I'll get pricing for both and see what the admin folks want to do. We'll have to decide soon, as our 4th site is opening October 2023 and we'll need to have something in place before that. We also have one site that is COLA with no TJC, so we're keeping that with COLA.

Ashlee Holland

Tue Dec 20, 2022 at 12:06PM

Thanks for the input Kathleen! We currently use CAP for our hospital laboratory so I am familiar with those standards as well. I think my lab director was hoping we could somehow include this off campus site in with our current CAP accreditation. I believe CAP responded with something about CLIA having to grant a multi-site CLIA certificate for that to be done since they are at a different address and I'm not sure what all that would entail, if even possible.

Peggy Mann

Tue Dec 20, 2022 at 12:18PM

Hi Ashlee,
I'm pretty familiar with multi-site CLIA certificates if you want to contact me directly pmann@utmb.edu.

I guess where I'm confused is why you aren't able to have a CAP survey with multiple CLIA#s, each with their own physical address? (Guessing this is a financial consideration to try to only have one CLIA# for CAP?)

Ashlee Holland

Wed Dec 21, 2022 at 11:38AM

I did reach out to TJC and ask which accrediting agencies they accepted. Their response was that their cooperative partners were CAP and The state of WA for laboratories that reside in WA. This means either you must use TJC as your accrediting agency or you only have those 2 other options, unless you are located in WA, this means CAP is the only other option. It doesn't look like they will accept CLIA as the accrediting agency. I just wanted to pass along that information in case anyone else would find it useful.

Ken Charpie

Wed Dec 21, 2022 at 11:48AM

I highly recommend CAP. JCAHO's standards are incredibly ambiguous in comparison, allowing inspectors great latitude during an inspection to focus on unusual issues or personal crusades in how they interpret CLIA (or OSHA regs). JCAHO inspectors are hugely unpredictable compared to CAP and seem to have a LOT more power due to the way their standards are written. I'm sure for any hospital with JCAHO certification already, it will be cheaper for them to put the lab under JCAHO as well instead of CAP. (That's what happened to my lab, we used to be CAP accredited) I advise you to fight very hard for your facility to pay more for CAP if that happens. Their standards are far more clear and therefore more consistent to work with during inspections.

Kathleen David

Wed Dec 21, 2022 at 12:44PM

TJC can't "not accept" CLIA--they're the OG, and CLIA is who deems TJC as acceptable! I'm going to push for CAP as well, we know it. I would put TJC dead last in choices, both because of the reasons Ken stated, as well as the fact that this seems like maneuvering on the part of TJC, and I don't like that.

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COLA and Joint Commission