Joint Commission Seeks Applicants for Codman Award

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. -- The Joint Commission on

Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is accepting

applications for the eighth annual Ernest A. Codman Award. This

prestigious award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement

by organizations and individuals to achieve improvements in the quality

and safety of healthcare.

An application for the Codman Award is available at www.jcaho.org for the

more than 16,000 healthcare organizations and programs accredited by

JCAHO. Applications may be printed online, using Adobe Portable Document

Format. The deadline for applications is April 05, 2004.

Award application forms are being made available earlier to provide more

time for organizations to complete and submit the required information and

materials. The revised application has been modified to enhance the

clarity of the Codman Award requirements and streamline the supporting

documentation requirements.

Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes

measurement," the Ernest A. Codman Award showcases the effective use of

performance measurement by healthcare organizations and individuals to

improve the quality and safety of health care. An award may be given in

each of the following categories each year if a candidate organization or

individual qualifies: ambulatory care, behavioral healthcare, hospital,

home care, laboratory, long term care, network, multiple organization, and

individual.

Awards are given only to meritorious applications and are not necessarily

made in each category. A panel of national experts in quality measurement

and improvement will select the recipients of the 2004 awards.

Healthcare organizations may submit any performance measurement and

improvement initiative that reflects the accomplishment of a significant

performance improvement. Applicant-organizations must demonstrate an

organization-wide commitment and approach to data driven

improvement. Specifically, the award evaluation committee will look for

and evaluate the following attributes of each initiative submitted for

consideration:

- Planning process

- Performance measurement and data analysis

- Performance improvement actions and results

Applicants or nominees for the individual award must demonstrate

leadership in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health

care services.

The 2004 Codman Award will be presented during a December 2004 national

conference in Chicago and award winners will showcase their winning

entries at special presentations during the conference. The Codman Award

takes its origin in the revolutionary concepts of Dr. Codman, who in 1910

proposed a system for physicians and hospitals to track every patient

treated to determine whether individual treatments were effective. If a

treatment was not effective, an effort would be made to determine why, so

that similar cases could be treated successfully in the future. Dr.

Codman's "end results" system emphasized the important utility of outcomes

measurement for performance improvement.

This year's Codman Awards will be presented Dec. 3, 2003 at the Joint

Commission's 2003 National Conference on Quality and Safety in Health Care

at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.

Call JCAHO's Customer Service Center at (630) 792.5800 or send an e-mail message to: tjohnson@jcaho.org for additional information about the Codman Award.