The authors should thank the authors of letter entitled "Iran Hospital Accreditation system" for their criticisms. In response to this letter, which includes some criticisms about our letter entitled "The Accreditation of Hospitals in Iran", the following points can be made: The overall purpose of this letter was to look at the status of accreditation from the past to the present time and had o...

The Joint Commission added several new requirements applicable to accredited behavioral health care organizations that provide care for individuals with eating disorders. The requirements will appear in the “Care, Treatment, and Services” (CTS), “Leadership” (LD), “Performance Improvement” (PI), and “Rights and Responsibilities” (RI) chapters in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Behavi...

The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 established the International Joint Commission (IJC) as an organization designed to resolve disputes and to avoid conflicts over transboundary environmental matters. Article IV of the Treaty provides the provision that neither party shall cause pollution that would injure the health or property of the other side. In 1972, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreemen...

The practice of anesthesia and sedation continues to expand beyond the operating room and now includes the gastroenterology suite, magnetic resonance imaging suites, and the cardiac catheterization laboratory. Non-anesthesiologists frequently administer sedation, in part because of a lack of available anesthesiologists and economic aspect, which emphasizes the safety of sedation. The Joint Comm...

The Joint Commission recently announced its new Community-Based Palliative Care (CBPC) Certification option for accredited home care organizations. This specialty certification, which recognizes home health and hospice organizations that provide community-based palliative care to patients and their families at home, will be effective July 1, 2016. Using the results of a market research study of...

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) together form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. International Standards are developed by technical committees, whose membership comes from national bodies who are members of ISO or from IEC participants. ISO and IEC committees collaborate in fields of mutual inter...