About Andrew Rosen, Vice President
Andrew Rosen, MBA is Vice President, Joint Commission International. In this role, Mr. Rosen leads strategic development, execution, and mission development for Joint Commission International.
Mr. Rosen is a strategic leader who built a globally influential healthcare innovation, strategy, and management advisory business. He has expertise in serving domestic and international organizations and is a trusted hospital C-suite advisor, thought leader, and communicator.
As Executive Director – International for The Advisory Board Company, Mr. Rosen created the international hospital research leader role and rebuilt a dormant international community to a global brand with 600+ member organizations in over 50 countries. As a thought leader, he is a frequent speaker and co-author of over 15 management books for hospital executive leaders including Transformational Quality: Leading the Organization to Clinical Excellence. Previously, Mr. Rosen was Executive Vice President for Levin Associates, and earlier he served as Vice President of Strategy for Gartner Inc.
Mr. Rosen received his Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management (University of NSW) & Duke University, and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney.
About Joint Commission International
Joint Commission International (JCI) is a part of The Joint Commission, a nonprofit healthcare improvement organization and the world’s largest healthcare accreditor. With over 70 years of experience, The Joint Commission collaborates with more than 23,000 healthcare organizations and programs across 70+ countries. JCI offers a range of services including accreditation, certification, education, advisory, technology, and publications to help achieve its vision that all people always experience the safest, highest quality, and best-value healthcare worldwide. Visit www.jointcommissioninternational.org for more information.
Medical Travel & Digital Health News (MTDHN): Can you tell our readers about your background? Please tell us where you see JCI going and the relationship between Joint Commission and Joint Commission International.
Andrew Rosen (AR): My current role is Vice President of Joint Commission International (JCI) responsible for overseeing all of our activities outside the U.S. Previously, I spent about 15 years at the Advisory Board Company as the Head of International Research, where I worked with hospitals and health systems worldwide to improve their operations, strategy, workforce and quality through best practice research. I’ve also worked with organizations like Gartner, which also serves to help organizations around the world improve.
Throughout my career, I would say that the most rewarding experiences have been those where I’ve helped to improve the quality of care and safety across the healthcare continuum. That is why I’m extremely excited to be part of JCI, where I can bring my passion and experience working with healthcare providers and governments from around the world and help them enhance the safety and quality of care within their communities.
In terms of the relationship between Joint Commission and JCI, JCI is part of the Joint Commission Enterprise and extends its mission to serve healthcare organizations outside of the U.S. Our joint aim is to ensure that people everywhere receive the safest, highest-quality healthcare experience. We achieve this through education, publication, software, advisory services as well as setting standards, accrediting and certifying organizations based on those standards.
MTDHN: JCI is alive and well?
AR: Absolutely! In fact, this is the busiest time JCI has ever experienced. We have a significant amount of ongoing work as well as many projects launching right now and many more that are in the works. So, we are definitely more than alive and well – we’re thriving.
MTDHN: Do you think this “alive and well” status is because there is a growing interest in international medicine or medical travel?
AR: While I may not be able to directly address trends in medical tourism, it is clear that there is an increase in interest in medical travel. We’ve been approached by many organizations involved in medical tourism as a result.
Just recently, I saw a video on social media from an influencer showcasing their experience at a JCI-accredited facility in Turkey. The fact that the facility’s JCI accreditation was highlighted, underscored the trust and high-quality that medical tourists from the U.S. or elsewhere can expect from JCI-accredited organizations. We’re extremely proud of that.
In addition, everyone around the world is interested in making sure that their healthcare providers provide safe, quality care in this rapidly changing healthcare ecosystem. This is increasingly difficult as healthcare becomes more complex, and expectations increase, but that’s where JCI helps. It’s a great opportunity for us to fulfill our mission to help those healthcare organizations serve their communities better.
MTDHN: How many hospitals and countries are currently involved that are JCI accredited?
AR: Currently, outside the U.S., we work with more than 1,000 healthcare providers, health systems, ministries and governments in over 70 countries and that number continues to grow
We are best known for our accreditation services but we’re really an improvement organization. As a not-for-profit organization, we’re not interested in growing just for growth’s sake; rather, we see so much opportunity to fulfill our mission of guiding organizations on their quality and safety journeys.
We see a number of broad areas where we can further impact healthcare:
First, there’s a lot more we can do to establish deeper relationships with our current partner organizations to innovate and help them reach even higher levels of quality.
Second, healthcare exists in every part of the world, and while we are the biggest healthcare accreditation organization, we only serve a sliver of healthcare providers. India alone has approximately 69,000 hospitals – so there is plenty of room to expand our mission. We’re committed to extending our services to healthcare organizations in regions and countries that are more resource-challenged or those that are early in their development journey, particularly in the lower to middle-income countries.
JCI’s goal is to help them build foundational quality and patient safety infrastructure, educate them, build staff skills and competency, foster the right culture and to also recognize their efforts and milestones along the development journey. We’re working on several new partnerships to support this effort.
Third, we’re part of a movement to expand the definition of patient safety to include other types of harm that healthcare providers need to share responsibility for or at least need to address.
For example, sustainability – healthcare provision can cause the community harm through carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. Healthcare providers have a responsibility to consider and address these issues and ensure that health systems are resilient enough to cope with climate-driven health crises when the occur.
Sustainability may also be something that medical tourists care about as well when choosing the organizations they’re going to be visiting.
Additionally, health equity is just as important. Can our systems really be considered safe when there’s a high variation in care and outcomes based on demography or other factors? There’s a lot of work to be done in expanding the vision of what patient safety and quality of care means across the care continuum.
Lastly, there are many organizations and people within the healthcare ecosystem that affect the quality of care but are not necessarily core healthcare providers. There’s significant potential in helping those groups improve and better support the healthcare system serve their communities. This could include vendors, organizations that create websites and also those involved in medical tourism.
MTDHN: Cybersecurity has become a big challenge, especially in the United States, with frequent incidents of patient data being compromised in so many different areas. Could you share your thoughts on this issue? Is this a focus area for JCI?
AR: We’ve just published our eighth edition of hospital standards, which was published on July 1st this year and will be effective in January 2025. In this edition, we’ve implemented many updates and improvements in response to the evolving healthcare environment.
One of the updates includes a new chapter focused on the issues surrounding healthcare and information technology, one of which is cybersecurity. The chapter addresses other critical areas such as the use of EMRs and the constant development that’s happening in that area.
Cybersecurity is a significant priority for us and for the healthcare organizations that we serve.
MTDHN: How have international hospital standards changed in the past five years? Do these changes impact the surveys?
AR: Absolutely. As mentioned, healthcare is constantly changing so we’re always evolving our standards to keep pace. This involves adding new standards and updating our current standards. But it’s not just about more standards, we also revise and remove standards that are outdated, redundant, confusing and/or no longer relevant or evidence based. Standards refinement is a very important part of the process.
In fact, JCI has updated our hospital standards twice in the past five years. In addition to the new chapter on cybersecurity and the issues around EMRS, telehealth, etc., a key feature in the new standards of our eight edition is a section on global health impact.
We developed this in collaboration with the Geneva Sustainability Center which is part of the International Hospital Federation. This new section emphasizes the importance of sustainability as a part of patient safety and is about “putting a stake in the ground” for how healthcare organizations should approach the new environmental standards and establish new processes to meet them.
MTDHN: Are there any other new members of your senior leadership team that you want to introduce?
AR: Yes. Apart from myself, I think the most exciting addition to our senior team would be Dr. Neelam Dhingra, our vice president and Chief Patient Safety officer.
She joined us just a few months ago after finishing a 25-year term as head of Patient Safety at the World Health Organization (WHO) and is currently leading our efforts to expand our mission to the new regions previously mentioned that we haven’t traditionally served.
She is also our chief spokesperson on patient safety and quality topics and is a key liaison between JCI and the patient safety community, Ministries of Health, inter-governmental and non-government organizations and healthcare organizations and systems.
We’re very excited to have her on board at JCI and she’s already making a significant impact transforming the design of services to further enhance patient safety and quality.
Another notable addition is Dr. Paulo Neno, one of our top surveyors based in Brazil. He is taking on a role as the clinical lead for accreditation to ensure that our accreditation services are top-notch.
Additionally, just last week, we announced Kevin Zacharyasz as our first director of Healthcare Sustainability. He will work with both the U.S. and international organizations to support our mission to environmental sustainability in healthcare.
MTDHN: Will you be presenting at any international meetings that you would like to call attention to?
AR: Yes. Dr. Dhingra and I, along with other team members, will be representing JCI at various international healthcare conferences this year. Just recently, a member of our team spoke at a medical tourism conference in Mexico City, which was very interesting.
At the end of the month, I will be speaking at Hospital Management Asia (HMA), held in Bali.
In addition, our CEO, Dr. Perlin, along with many of us will be presenting at the International Hospital Federation (IHF) Wealth Congress in Rio de Janeiro on September 9th, followed by presentations at the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) in Istanbul. ISQua is essentially the accreditor of accreditors, so it is a significant quality and safety conference.
Beyond that, we will also be speaking at conferences in India, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Dubai and Japan within the next four months. This is in addition to the educational workshops we’ll be conducting in Prague, Singapore, Bangkok and other locations, as well as many other regional healthcare associations and individual healthcare organization-sponsored events at which we regularly present.
MTDHN: You’re celebrating your 25th anniversary. Looking back and looking ahead, are you planning any special events or functions?
AR: Absolutely. Currently, we’re more focused on what we can do in the next 25 years. The way we think about it, The Joint Commission has been serving healthcare organizations for more than 70 years, and we are part of that.
We’re very proud of the work that JCI has done over the last 25 years. However, it’s not really about us – we’re celebrating the efforts of all of our healthcare organizations that voluntarily choose to work with us to improve their quality.
We will take a moment to celebrate the achievements of those organizations at our upcoming pre-conference event that we’re hosting right before the IHF World Congress. We invite healthcare leaders around the world to join us to celebrate and recognize organizations that have committed to working with JCI to improve patient safety and quality of care over the last 25 years.
The event will also provide an opportunity to learn about some of JCI’s cutting-edge developments in patient safety and quality on a global scale.
MTDHN: Is there anything that you would like to tell us about the organization that differentiates it from any other international accreditation? What makes JCI special?
AR: I believe our scale and experience sets us apart. We are the largest accrediting organization, with the most experience. There are other good accreditors out there that operate in different ways, but they don’t have JCI’s experience, depth of knowledge or the list of excellent organizations that we work with around the world.
Another key differentiator is our commitment to constant innovation. We are focused on making sure that everything that we do is fit for purpose for the healthcare organizations we serve. Our goal is not only to assure high-quality services, but to collaborate with healthcare organizations to support their continuous improvement. We don’t want to be seen as some sort of inspector, but rather as an organization that’s there to help them on their journey, supporting their efforts while meeting and exceeding robust standards at the same time.
We also make sure that the survey process is not any more onerous than it needs to be. The last thing we want to do is to disrupt a working healthcare organization’s activities during the survey period.
Finally, we are currently working on building several different partnerships. In just the past few months, we are already in potential partnership talks with at least 30 organizations. We will announce some of the first very exciting partnerships in the coming months.
MTDHN: Some might say that the fees associated with your services could be high. For a developing nation or an emerging country, is there any flexibility or scaling on the fees or is it just across the board?
AR: I can understand that perspective. We are not one price fits all, but we provide a high-quality service, and our prices are comparable with our high-quality peers. We are always working to lower the costs for our clients. That said, a major area of growth for us is finding ways to work with healthcare organizations that may potentially struggle with the fees for the service we provide. We are exploring different ways to do that, whether it’s from outside funding or organizing our services in a more cost-effective and sustainable manner which would be tailored to the different types of organizations.
The most important factor for us, always, is to make sure we don’t do anything to compromise the quality of the services we provide. We are there to assure communities that their healthcare organization is meeting a set of standards, so we have to make sure that goal is met.
One of the things that many of the organizations we work with really appreciate about the Joint Commission is that we have a blend of local and international experience when we work with an organization. What makes us different is that we don’t just cover a few regions, we work across the globe, not to mention over 20,000 organizations in the US. That means, when we work with healthcare providers, we can bring best practices from every corner of the world. The healthcare providers we work with tell us that that experience is what sets us apart.
Statement from Joint Commission International
JCI has been significantly investing in our international presence and strategic growth including the appointment of two new senior leaders:
In April 2024, Andrew Rosen, MBA, joined JCI as vice president, International. He brings expertise that will play a critical role in moving JCI forward and accelerating capabilities across the enterprise to help enable and empower healthcare organizations globally to continuously improve patient safety and quality of care; and
In June 2024, Neelam Dhingra, MBBS, MD, joined JCI as vice president and chief patient safety officer. A leader and global champion for patient safety, Dr. Dhingra previously led the World Health Organization’s (WHO) programs on patient safety and blood safety for more than two decades. She was added to JCI’s leadership, specifically to expand our mission that all patients receive safe, high-quality, equitable and compassionate healthcare around the world.
- In July 2024, JCI will publish our 8th edition of hospital standards with subsequent surveys beginning in January of 2025.
- JCI will be speaking at several conferences in Asia later in 2024. In August 2024, we will be speaking and exhibiting at Health Management Asia in Bali and in September, JCI will be at the International Society for Quality in Healthcare’s (ISQua) world conference in Istanbul. During both of these conferences, JCI will be announcing exciting new partnerships and plans.
- Also in September 2024, JCI invites all healthcare organizations to join us at our leadership summit at the International Hospital Federation World Congress in Rio, where we will be celebrating 25 years of JCI.
- JCI continues to accredit more than 1,000 healthcare organizations in 72 countries around the world and that number continues to grow. I am happy to provide additional information or arrange interviews with experts on the topics mentioned.
We remain committed to our mission to continuously improve healthcare quality and patient safety around the globe. We look forward to collaborating with you as we continue to announce exciting JCI news.