Yvette McCarter, member of the Public and Scientific Affairs Board Committee on Laboratory Practices represented ASM at the 17th Annual Joint Commission Liaison Network Forum, 8-9 July 2009 at The Joint Commission Headquarters in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.  The Liaison Network was established in 1992 to improve communications between The Joint Commission (TJC) and health care professional groups. The major themes of this year's meeting were promoting a uniform culture of safety among health care organizations and the incorporation of Robust Process Improvement (RPI) into the processes at TJC to provide sustained improvement in quality to customers. There was a discussion on the use of RPI to develop and implement tools to improve the consistency of standards interpretation, reduce the standards development time cycle, and accelerate the timeframe of standards integration. The Joint Commission is also undertaking a standards renewal project in an effort to generate standards that are easier to understand, to remove outdated and poor standards, and to fix standards that are written in ambiguous language. Standards will be reviewed to determine how important the standard is to patient safety and quality.