A surprise visit by the Joint Commission to the Guam Memorial Hospital proves to be positive as the hospital maintains its accreditation. It was last week Wednesday the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations paid the Guam Memorial Hospital an unexpected visit and after spending two days assessing the operations and facilities, GMH maintains its accreditation.

Administrator Ted Lewis said, "That's who Guam Memorial Hospital works with to have evaluate and make sure that we are accredited on their standards and so they paid us a visit and we were deemed to be in good and regular standing."

Over the course of the two-day visit the Joint Commission not only evaluated the services at the hospital but also imparted some knowledge. "Its also an educational process in which the staff learn many new standards that are coming and also get surveyors opinions on what they are seeing in the industry how you can continually improve care," he said. "So it was a very positive experience for us we learned a lot and the surveyors left with suggestions and many compliments for what they saw as a very studious and dedicated group of caregivers that are continually improving the care for the residents of this island."

And speaking of improvement the Joint Commission of course did not leave without making a few suggestions. "One particular area is while we have our nurses our we certainly provide a not only the minimum but a very adequate level of staffing for our patient load yet they made the observation that we need to get more nurses," said Lewis.

Lewis says sometimes the nurses hours are higher than normal, as a result they will be stepping up recruitment efforts and higher more specialty nurses. Lewis adds the surveyors did not leave without acknowledging the hospital's efforts, noting, "They complimented our credentialing process the vast improvements we have had in managing our medical records with the physicians and getting its always a challenge in getting a medical record completed within a timely manner because its very complex for the physician."

He adds that vast improvement was also seen in infection control prevention and the overall attitude of the staff and physicians with regards to providing the best care for their patients.