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Standards and Conditions of Participation
Within the 10th amendment it is expressed that the states, not the federal government, have the primary responsibility for public health. Each state, therefore, has a division or agency that promotes patient safety and high quality healthcare which is carried out by conducting on-site surveys. In addition to the state requirements, there are also federal licensing and certification programs which require that performance standards be met in both providing healthcare and in the physical structure and maintenance of the healthcare facility (LaTour, Eichenwald & Oachs, 2013). Widespread application of healthcare standards however, did not occur until 1946 when Congress passed the Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act (Healthlawyers.org, 2015). For example, one criteria to receive federal grants and loans from the Hill-Burton fund is that states were required to license entities to ensure that hospital facilities adhered to a set of minimum quality and service requirements. By setting these standards for licensing, healthcare started its journey towards improving and standardizing the health and safety of individuals receiving services.
Medicare, a federal health insurance program that pays for many types of health care expenses, is an entitlement program in which U.S. citizens earn the right to enroll by working and paying their taxes for a minimum required time period. Enacted in 1965, Congress decided that minimum standards for this program would be set at the national level but that they would be certified as meeting these standards, by individual state agencies. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under Medicare Law, established these national minimum standards, also known as the Conditions of Participation (CoPs), for healthcare facilities and other Medicare beneficiaries

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