Deblynn Austin, FNP, MSN
Senior Consultant
Debra “Deblynn” Austin, FNP, MSN is an accreditation and regulatory compliance surveyor with over 40 successful years of healthcare industry expertise. Most recently, Ms. Austin served as a distinguished Nurse Surveyor for The Joint Commission (TJC). For a decade, she evaluated quality and safety measures across hospitals, ambulatory settings, and long-term acute care facilities. In this role, she played a critical part in ensuring that patient safety and quality of care met the highest national standards.
An expert in TJC and CMS regulatory requirements, Ms. Austin focused on high-risk areas such as dialysis, behavioral health, pediatrics, operating rooms, sterile processing departments, and high-level disinfection, in addition to overseeing medical and nursing care procedures. Over the course of her tenure with TJC, she conducted more than 450 surveys and was the acting Team Leader for ~95% of them and functioned as a System Team Leader for both academic medical centers and community hospitals.
Before The Joint Commission, Ms. Austin held leadership roles at Virginia Commonwealth Medical Center in Richmond, VA, where she served as both the Director of Ambulatory and High-Risk Safety Compliance and as the Coordinator of Performance Improvement. Additionally, she served as the Regulatory Compliance Coordinator for Regulatory Affairs and as a Clinical Nurse IV at Duke Raleigh Hospital. Her extensive background also includes experience as a Family Nurse Practitioner in Pediatrics, as well as RN positions in Pediatric ICU, Pediatric Medical-Surgical, Adult Medical and Surgical ICU, and Cardiac Step-Down units.
Ms. Austin earned her Master of Science in Nursing with a Family Nurse Practitioner certificate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, following her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Vermont. She is a published author in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal and is certified as a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.