Where did the updated Joint Commission Standards for Infection Control come from? Who was involved in the process of developing the new standards?

The new standards were informed by a variety of sources including, the Hierarchy of Control, Law and Regulation, and CoPs as all primary sources. The Joint Commission engaged a panel of eight emerging special pathogens experts from a variety of organizations, like NETEC and the CDC. These experts are named in the R3 report. The Joint Commission periodically reviews its requirements in order to retire the ones that have become dated and, more recently, has put more emphasis on simplifying these requirements and providing more meaningful evaluations of hospitals. You will notice that the rewrite of this chapter largely eliminated the differences in the language that existed between the Joint Commission Infection Control standards and the CMS Conditions of Participation (CoPs).