e-mail addresses, JCAHO, and the Trilateral Committee

[Geoffrey Ibbott <GSI@UKCC.uky.edu>]

I first saw the request for e-mail addresses on the "MedPhys" bulletin
board, and prepared my response for Medical Physicists.  When I became aware
that the request had been made on "Radsafe", I just sent a duplicate
without considering the different audience.  So:

The Trilateral Committee is an informal group composed of the leadership
of the AAPM, the American College of Medical Physicists (ACMP) and
the Commission on Physics of the American College of Radiology (ACR-COP).
It has no authority.  It exists to facilitate communications among the
three societies.  Meetings are typically held three times each year.

My appointment as "primary contact" with the JCAHO was effectively made
by each of the three societies, as coordinated by the Trilateral Committee.
Consequently, I'm not there to represent the HPS, or health physicists,
except to the extent that medical physics and health physics overlap in
the medical environment (which, of course, is a great deal.)  If there
are health physics concerns that stem from JCAHO standards, that anyone
reading this suspects are not recognized by medical physicists, or
that you think might conflict with medical physics concerns, I'd like to
hear about them.  Please don't blame me or medical physicists for the
new JCAHO standards.  They resulted from the JCAHO's "Agenda for Change"
which is to make all standards much broader, oriented to "outcome", and
eliminate requirements for any particular job category other than physicians
and nurses.  At the moment, I feel very encouraged by the direction my
conversations with the JCAHO have taken, and feel that this arrangement
will be productive.  I think the JCAHO feels the same, as they have requested
quite a bit of information (the contributions of physicists to patient
health and safety, for example) which will be used to help educate their
surveyors.  We have been asked to participate in the field review of
the draft 1996 standards, and have done so, in the process contributing
a number of comments explaining the role of medical physicists (and
"medical health physicists").

I hope this helps explain the arrangement.  Please feel free to contact
me directly if I can (try to) answer any more questions.

Geoffrey S. Ibbott, Ph.D.
University of Kentucky Medical Center
Lexington, KY
gsi@ukcc.uky.edu