IU Health Starke Hospital recently underwent a rigorous accreditation process. President Craig Felty says the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation’s findings are a nationally recognized symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to “They come in and they more or less go from top to bottom in your hospital,” Felty says. “They look at everything from the physical structure to our processes to our quality outcomes to how we credential and privilege our physicians. It’s a very thorough four-day survey that’s done every three years.”

The survey team comes in unannounced. Felty says the hospital staff has to be in a “state of constant readiness” for them. The Joint Commission team members spent four days at IU Health Starke Hospital, touring the building, tracking the progress of individual patients through the hospital and talking to cart and bedside care providers.

Felty says the Joint Commission’s report was overall very positive. “We had absolutely no findings in the actual patient care division, which was absolutely wonderful. We have an older facility, and so we do have challenges that come with that. A couple of our findings were related to the age of the facility and things that pop up here or there. The few findings that we had, we are very happy to say and very proud of the colleagues of Starke Hospital, or physician partners, who we could not do without. Physicians are a huge part of our organization. We are just very proud to say that we had a remarkable survey, one of the best surveys I’ve had in my 20-plus years of experience with the Joint Commission.”

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