Joint Commission Affiliated Labs

COLA/TJC Cooperative Accreditation Initiative

COLA and The Joint Commission (TJC) have had a Cooperative Accreditation Initiative (CAI) agreement since 1996. Under this agreement, TJC permits laboratories within TJC health care organizations to be accredited by COLA to meet TJC requirements. This reduces the duplication of survey and inspection activities experienced by health care organizations.

TJC requires that TJC-affiliated laboratories be subject to unannounced inspections unless the following conditions apply:

First-cycle COLA surveys (labs that are new to COLA) will be announced.
Labs with an annual test volume of less than 25,000 will receive limited notice of the survey.
Labs that require special authorization or clearance to obtain access to the laboratory will receive limited notice of the survey.
All other TJC-affiliated laboratories will have an unannounced survey no earlier than 18 months following their last onsite survey.

Laboratories will have an opportunity to identify certain “blackout” days throughout the year for which an unannounced inspection would be impractical.

For a list of documents necessary for the COLA survey, click here.

Labs affiliated with TJC will also be required to complete and return a self-assessment, (similar to TJC’s Periodic Performance Review process) during each year the laboratory is not subject to an onsite survey. COLA will be contacting these laboratories in order to update important demographic information necessary for their accreditation process.

For more information contact rfrench@cola.org.