Joint Comission | 3
tinuously improve health care for the public,
in collaboration with other stakeholders, by
evaluating health care organizations and in-
spiring them to excel in providing safe and ef-
fective care of the highest quality and value.
This mission supports a vision that all people
always experience the safest, highest quality,
best-value health care across all health care
settings. Today’s Joint Commission evolved
from the “end result system of hospital stan-
dardization” proposed by Ernest Codman,
M.D. Dr. Codman’s system of tracking the
effectiveness of hospital treatments and us-
ing that information to improve patient care
led his colleague Franklin Martin, M.D. to
establish the American College of Surgeons
(ACS) in 1913. The “end result” system be-
came the ACS stated objective and was used
in its Hospital Standardization Program.
The Hospital Standardization Program
