COVER STORY


CHANGES IN ACCREDITATION Three accrediting agencies explain upcoming modifications in their standards


The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care of Skokie, Illinois, the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities of Gurnee, Illinois, and The Joint Commission of Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, described the upcoming changes in their standards for ASC Focus. Learn what to expect from your survey experience, the steps you need to take to stay on top of your game and how to comply with the changed standards.


Accreditation and Seeing More Clearly


Changes in AAAHC standards and rating options BY ANGELA FITZSIMMONS


I have stood behind many a table in a convention center exhibit hall. The format is usually the same: the table is draped with a cloth that


includes our company logo and at the back of the “booth” is a fabric banner stretched across a structure of aluminum rods designed to collapse like an umbrel- la to fit into a travel barrel for shipping. The banner also displays our name. On the table are printed materials—mail- ers for the upcoming educational con- ference, newsletters, sample products, brochures describing our programs—


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stacked or fanned out or propped up on a small stand; each printed with a triangle built from a pyramid of three smaller triangles. The words “Accreditation As- sociation for Ambulatory Health Care” are repeated over and over. At one such conference, many peo- ple approached the table to thank us for being there, to share that we would be out to visit their organizations in the coming months or to say with some pride that they had recently “passed” their survey. But one individual, and then a handful more as the conference continued, stood in front of the table,


ASC FOCUS SEPTEMBER 2017 |www.ascfocus.org


took in all the logoed materials and then turned to go, saying, “Accredita- tion Association . . . oh, we are with triple A-H-C.” “But we are AAAHC,” I responded each time, pointing to a give-away printed with only those initials and, each time, we would both laugh. In the acronym-laden world of health care, we have long been known as AAAHC but we were still spelling out the full name of our organization, serving to make ourselves unfamiliar to some of the very organizations we accredit. Sometimes a set of fresh eyes sees something that, once pointed out, is


incredibly obvious. In fact, that is one of the most frequent ways we describe the benefit of accreditation: an independent, consultative review of a health care delivery organization


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