Some of the biggest transformations in healthcare, specifically in nurse staffing, are coming as the Joint Commission just announced updates to its healthcare standards. Among the changes introduced in Accreditation 360: The New Standard, one stands out: for the first time, nurse staffing is being included as a National Performance Goal.
This new standard requires that healthcare facilities have sufficient nursing staff to provide high-quality patient care. This means that recruiting and retention must become top priorities for healthcare facilities, especially in areas with higher turnover, such as behavioral health and emergency services. Inadequate staffing could threaten accreditation, making flexible workforce strategies, such as per-diem hiring, essential for operational success.
A new standard that emphasizes nurse staffing
Since its founding in 1951, The Joint Commission has set benchmark standards for healthcare quality across the U.S. Its accreditation system recognizes over twenty thousand organizations and programs that play a role in ensuring quality outcomes for patients. Most states use this major nonprofit organization as part of their own licensing and certification requirements.
The Joint Commission’s inclusion of nurse staffing as a National Performance Goal comes alongside a host of other changes that the Joint Commission is calling Accreditation 360: The New Standard. This sweeping overhaul of the Joint Commission’s healthcare standards aims to provide a more streamlined and transparent accreditation and certification process for healthcare facilities.
As part of this, the Joint Commission added a staffing component as Goal 12 of its Hospital National Performance Goals: “The hospital is staffed to meet the needs of the patients it serves, and staff are competent to provide safe, quality care.”
That overarching goal is broken down into two key subsets. The first ensures hospital leadership makes sufficient and qualified staffing a priority across all departments. And, second, a nurse executive, who must be a licensed registered nurse, will direct and oversee nursing staffing and operations.
To achieve accreditation and remain compliant in these areas, hospitals must provide documentation demonstrating how they will maintain adequate staffing, in part relying on data-driven models that consider the needs of their patients in each department.
While the updated standards do not specify nurse-to-patient ratios, setting nurse staffing as a performance measure emphasizes the importance of recruiting and retaining staff, reducing burnout, and optimizing workforce management. With sufficient staffing, patients receive higher-quality care, experience fewer complications, and generally have shorter hospital stays. Higher nurse-to-patient ratios also mean nurses enjoy higher job satisfaction, which, in turn, means better retention and less burnout.
Of course, nurse staffing standards aren’t the only change coming with Accreditation 360. The Joint Commission removed over 700 requirements, with an emphasis on redundant, repetitive, or outdated standards — such as smoking-related standards that are no longer necessary due to universal hospital smoking bans. The new system also provides online public access to updated standards, ensuring greater transparency.
Other updates have been designed to evolve alongside healthcare itself, especially regarding the rapid adoption of AI. This includes collaborating with the Coalition for Health AI to establish standards for the use of AI in American healthcare systems, aiming to streamline clinician workflows and deliver more personalized patient care while maintaining ethical standards.
How hospitals and clinics should prepare for 2026
To prepare for the implementation of new standards in 2026, healthcare leaders must ensure proper staffing ratios are met. Critical to this is the use of per diem staffing, which brings in professionals on a shift-by-shift or day-by-day basis for specialized procedures, covering peak times, or filling in for absent employees.
Per diem staffing can help fill gaps while hospitals manage workforce costs and scale their operations based on needs. This staffing model also enables a more streamlined and focused approach to nurse staffing, employee training, and other areas that require improvement.
How staffing standards are poised to affect nurses and healthcare job candidates
For healthcare job-seeking candidates, in particular, nurses, the new ruling from the Joint Commission should present a significant opportunity for finding work that matches their preferences. As hospitals seek to fill vacancies with qualified nursing professionals to meet Joint Commission standards, nurses should be on the lookout for more job openings with the potential for greater flexibility in shifts and compensation.
It’s important to keep in mind that the new standards for staffing require a mix of skills and experience based on the needs of the facility’s patients. Job-seeking candidates should make sure their resumes are fully up to date, particularly in regard to the service areas where they have prior experience. Specific experience in areas such as infection prevention, surgical services, or pharmacy may be more in demand at some facilities than others. Hospitals will be eager to find qualified nurses so they can remain compliant with the new standards.
Updated Joint Commission standards will also lead to changes on the job. Trimming the number of items nurses need to track for accreditation standards means nurses and other clinicians can spend less time on paperwork focused on structure and more time improving patient outcomes.
These fundamental changes to care models will streamline workflows for nurses, and allow for more time teaching patient-focused skills during orientation and ongoing training. With streamlined standards, nurses can spend more of their working hours caring for patients — the reason they entered the profession in the first place.
Creating positive change
The Joint Commission’s decision to prioritize nurse staffing as a National Performance Goal is poised to have a significant impact on healthcare facilities, nurses, and patients alike. Ideally, the new Joint Commission rulings can help create more opportunities for nursing professionals by encouraging hospitals to place a greater focus on recruiting and retaining staff to ensure adequate staffing.
When staffing and workforce management are prioritized, healthcare facilities can better meet Joint Commission standards for providing safe, competent care. By implementing solutions such as per diem staffing, patient outcomes can improve, and so can working conditions and opportunities for nurses.
