Joint Commission Survey: Readiness Checklist (2025-2026)
Starting in January, 2026, the Joint Commission (often referred to by its former acronym, JCAHO) is using a new accreditation process: Accreditation 360: The New Standard. This new model doesn’t change the hospital evaluation processes associated with legacy JCAHO surveys, but it does shift their focus, intentions, and guidance measures. So, a current Joint Commission Survey Readiness Checklist (2025-2026) needs to align with those new program priorities that value continuous quality improvement over prescriptive clinical standards.
For help navigating these revisions and streamlining your future Joint Commission inspection experiences, this guide explores the program’s need-to-know changes in addition to providing a Joint Commission mock survey checklist to maximize your readiness. Equipped with this helpful practice tool and links to the latest Joint Commission resources, you’ll be better situated to align your facility’s preparatory measures with the goals and priorities of shifting accreditory focus (from ensuring healthcare compliance to collaboratively pursuing elevated patient care).
What Is the Joint Commission Readiness Checklist?
A Joint Commission Survey Readiness Checklist (2025-2026) is best understood as a step-by-step translation of the organization’s service-specific, publicly available accreditation guides. These outline how surveys are conducted and what is evaluated in order to maintain accreditation. Along with other recent changes, acute settings now utilize Joint Commission Survey Process Guides (SPGs) to inform inspection preparation. Those can be found below for:
Non-acute care facilities maintain accreditation according to provisions specific to their service, with separate Joint Commission survey schedules and resources, all of which can be found online. These healthcare providers should base their Joint Commission Survey Readiness Checklist (2025-2026) on the latest (service-specific) Joint Commission Survey Activity Guide (SAG):
- Ambulatory Healthcare
- Assisted Living Community
- Behavioral Healthcare and Human Services
- Home Care
- Laboratory
- Nursing Care Center
- Office-Based Surgery
- Rural Health Clinic
- Telehealth
Summary of Readiness Checklist Items
An effective Joint Commission Survey Readiness Checklist (2025-2026) is a comprehensive document that often mirrors SPG or SAG activity lists, and may appear daunting at first glance. The following overview describes the sections of the checklist and what you’ll need for each one.
Remember, Joint Commission checklist items can (and should) vary by facility. The following overview provides a broad, generalized analysis of what information best aligns with the new Joint Commission National Performance Goals (NPGs) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid- (CMS)-directed Conditions of Participation (CoPs). It’s important to review the full, corresponding facility performance (or activity) guide once you’re ready for more service-specific details.
Surveyor Arrival and Orientation
This section details what you should do once the Joint Commission surveyors arrive at your facility. Upon their arrival, you’ll generally be expected to greet the surveyors, check their identification cards, and be prepared to show any documentation that needs to be reviewed at the start of the Joint Commission Inspection.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Up-to-date documents for your facility (full list in the Joint Commission Survey Activity Guide or SPG)
- Private space for surveyors to meet and reside in for the opening conference and throughout the inspection process
- Designated staff to orient surveyors to the layout, and governmental (and operational) structure of the facility
Individual Tracer Evaluation: Compliance and Standards
Each Joint Commission survey readiness checklist (2026’s included) should describe how surveyors assess the quality of care, treatment, and services delivered to patients. Tracer methodology is applied to chart reviews and data analysis to evaluate many of the patient care practices and procedures that were the focus of previous Joint Commission tracer observation forms. Updated tracer methodology is still used to analyze:
- Patient safety and lab testing protocols.
- Infection prevention and control practices.
- Medication administration processes.
- Health record documentation processes.
- Safety event reporting protocols.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Staff briefing session to relay what to expect during surveyor visit
- List of staff expected to be available (detailed in the Survey Activity Lists)
- Readily accessible performance monitoring data and quality indicator metrics (such as healthcare-acquired infection data)
Competence Assessments: Medical Staff Credentialing and Privileging
There will be a few sections detailing how surveyors evaluate the way facilities keep their staff trained and credentialed. Surveyors will examine any competency assessments that need to be regularly taken by staff. Additionally, they’ll review the facility’s overall process of credentialing staff and appointing them to positions.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Accessible and up-to-date employee files
- Any documents detailing the employee bylaws
- Processes for credentialing, onboarding, and training for all employees and contractors
Life Safety Code
This section explains how surveyors will review your facility’s Life Safety Code, which refers to the maintenance of any fire safety, emergency power, and gas/vacuum systems. Surveyors will assess these appliances and the general layout of your facility to ensure there’s nothing hazardous related to the structure of the building.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Ladder and flashlight for the surveyor touring facility rooms
- Maintenance staff to escort surveyor through locked areas
- Maintenance records for fire protection and suppression equipment, emergency power systems, and medical gas and vacuum systems
Emergency Management
This section details how surveyors will assess your facility’s emergency management systems. This will mostly involve looking over any emergency planning documents and making sure everything is up to date. Surveyors will also assess how your plans align with local regulations and laws.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Updated documents detailing emergency and disaster planning (full list in the Survey Activity Guide)
- Policies and procedures for Interim Life Safety Measures (ILSMs)
- A list of recent emergencies/disaster incidents and an analysis of how your team executed the facility emergency operations plan
Organizational Quality and Performance Improvement
This section focuses on data management, and how key indicators and outcomes are used to evaluate and improve the quality of patient care. Surveyors will be looking for patterns and trends across available data that signal the results of your continuous improvement efforts.
What You’ll Need to Prepare
- The processes for collecting, analyzing, and acting on quality metric data
- Systemic tracers that track facility-wide outcomes
- Upfront, transparent analysis of trends and patterns (both the beneficial and the concerning)
Leadership: Governance, Administration, and Management
This section outlines how surveyors will take the time to get to know the leadership of the facility and how they work to maintain structure and culture. This will involve an in-depth interview with selected leadership staff.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Private room for surveyors to meet with the leadership team
- A list of recent workplace wellness and quality improvement initiatives and how they impacted your patients and staff
- Processes for how you evaluate performance and provide employee feedback
Report Back and Exit Survey
Similar to previous JCAHO surveys, the inspection culminates with the surveyor report and an exit conference. Here, Joint Commission representatives and facility leadership will unpack reported patterns or trends in performance and discuss the Joint Commission SAFER matrix. The Survey Analysis For Evaluating Risk (SAFER) tool offers an innovative approach to discussing deficiencies, prompting a Requirement for Improvement (RFI).
For any unresolved matters, the surveyor may ask for follow up via an Evidence of Standard Compliance (ESC), which can be submitted after the survey. Although the Joint Commission survey readiness checklist (2026 and beyond) has fallen out of favor in lieu of broader, quality concerns, it’s still a handy preparatory tool, readying you for the full inspection process, including the finale.
What You’ll Need To Prepare
- Notification to senior members of the executive team, informing them of the time and location for the exit survey meeting
- A designated conference room with table, power outlet, and a telephone
- Method for re-collecting all facility documents
Are You Ready for Your Next Joint Commission Survey?
Now that you’ve learned how to develop a Joint Commission Survey Readiness Checklist (2025-2026), you may be looking for more ways to maintain standards of care and safety before your next survey. Check out our latest data-based healthcare insights, tips, and guides, written by our experienced team for facility leaders like you.