The Joint Commission’s Accreditation Committee approved the 2014 accreditation and certification decision rules for all accreditation and certification programs. The revised accreditation decision rules are effective for surveys as of January 1, 2014, while the revised certification decision rules are effective immediately. Revisions are shown in the boxes on pages 3–7 for accreditation program...

QUESTIONS UNDER STUDY Studies from several countries (Scandinavia, United Kingdom) report that general practitioners (GPs) experience problems in sickness certification. Our study explored views of Swiss GPs towards sickness certification, their practice and experience, professional skills and problematic interactions with patients. METHODS We conducted an online survey among GPs throughout S...

Bolivia is seldom thought of as a country in the vanguard, but she currently leads the developing world in the certification of well-managed forests, and in efforts to develop a national forest certification infrastructure. While the Bolivian experience with certification largely bears out conventional expectations regarding the behavior of firms in response to market demand for certified produ...

Software certification demonstrates the reliability and safety of software systems in such a way that it can be checked by an independent authority with minimal trust in the techniques and tools used in the certification process itself. It builds on existing software assurance, validation, and verification techniques but introduces the notion of explicit sojbvare certijicates, which contain all...

One of the main components of public key infrastructure (PKI) is the center of certification. The function which it can fulfill, depends on the specific protocol. In the article the center of certification is the trustworthy third part, which includes the center of authorization (CA) and time stamping authority (TSA). The center of certification is the realization of certification subprotocol, ...

Critics may argue that RDMS certification is merely a technician “merit badge.” However, there are a number of valid counterarguments to this claim. First, there are qualifying pathways for RDMS or Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographer certification that are provided specifically for physicians. One new vascular sonography certification separate from RDMS is available only to physicians. Se...

PURPOSE To examine the relationship between maintenance of certification (MOC) and the clinical knowledge demonstrated by family physicians as they move further away from formal training. METHOD Performances of 10,801 examinees-2,440 seeking initial certification; 8,361 seeking MOC-on the summer 2009 American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) certification examination were compared across 30 co...

BACKGROUND At present, sickness certification is largely undertaken by general practitioners (GPs). Guidance from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is available to help with this task; however, there has been little formal evaluation of the DWP's guidance in relation to day-to-day general practice. AIMS To assess GPs' training, knowledge and application of the DWP's sickness certifica...

The Common Criteria (CC) for Information Technology Security Evaluation provides comprehensive guidelines for the evaluation and certification of IT security regarding data security and data privacy. Due to the very complex and time-consuming certification process a lot of companies abstain from a CC certification. We created the CC Ontology tool, which is based on an ontological representation...

Pest-free status certification is desirable if the demand-side impacts (increased export revenue) and supply-side impacts (lower pest damage and decreased ongoing control costs) exceed the compliance monitoring and eradication costs. Thus, eradication may be optimal without certification. Certification is more likely for regions facing costly treatment requirements (bans) or possessing geograph...