Due Date for E-SOCÂT is Extended
The Joint Commission has extended the compliance date to September 1, 2007 for converting existing Life Safety Code® deficiencies into electronic Plans for Improvement (e-PFI) for all organizations. This applies to Life Safety Code deficiencies with a projected completion date after September 1, 2007. Although the process for directly entering deficiencies into the electronic Statements of Conditions (e-SOC) is currently available, The Joint Commission is working on a solution for importing an organization's existing electronic format(s) into a format that will accurately populate the e-PFI database. This import tool is anticipated to be available in the third quarter of 2007. The Joint Commission expects to provide specific, easily understandable instructions for users to modify an existing Microsoft^® Excel spreadsheet so it can be turned into The Joint Commission e-PFI database. All other databases will need to first be converted to Microsoft Excel (.xls) to work with the import program. Organizations that have maintained only hard copies of their Plans for Improvement or have a database that cannot be converted to Microsoft Excel will need to manually enter their PFI data into the e-SOC by September 1, 2007.   In 2004, The Joint Commission announced that the Statement of ConditionsÂT process would migrate to an electronic version effective January 1, 2007. Since August 2005, the e-SOC has been available to organizations via The Joint Commission extranet to allow ample time to migrate from the existing paper process to an electronic process. Part 2 of the e-SOC is the electronic Basic Building Information (BBI) and Part 4 is the e-PFI.

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