An increasingly regulated healthcare industry means ASC administrators must adhere to designated and often complex guidelines to gain accreditation. The looming task may leave administrators questioning the worth of accrediting their facility.
In a June 2010 article titled, "Why is Everyone Trying to Accredit My Office-Based Practice?," anesthesiologist Meena Desai, MD, board chair of AAAHC and managing partner for Nova Anesthesia Professionals in Villanova, Pa., previously questioned whether meeting accreditation guidelines actually improved the healthcare industry and benefited resource-strapped practices.
"Even though I'm interested in quality and patient outcomes, what I'm never interested in is people making me do things that A) don't make sense and B) I'm not sure will really have any effect," Dr. Desai said during a presentation at the Becker's ASC 23rd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs.
However, Dr. Desai has witnessed the healthcare industry evolve and has since changed her outlook. Now she is an advocate for accreditation as a means to facilitate change management in ASCs. She argues that accreditation can facilitate greater accountability, offer ASCs an adaptable framework and incite continuous change.
Here are three ways ASC administrators can use accreditation as a tool for change management.
1. Foster internal accountability and control for change processes. Dr. Desai said to achieve accreditation, ASC leaders need to understand their center's culture to properly execute change. One way for leaders to assess their center's culture is by giving each employee partial ownership in reaching accreditation guidelines, so everyone is in charge of a process or a function.
"If you give them some ownership over it, people have much more pride, much more information and they take it much more seriously because it lends some importance to what they are doing," Dr. Desai said. "It connects them to the whole," and the entire organization's accreditation efforts.
2. Leverage accreditation standards to support change. ASCs can use accreditation guidelines as a framework to manage their own change initiatives. Under accreditation, guidelines like structured processes, nationally recognized guidelines, communication patterns, peer review and quality improvement hold healthcare facilities accountable for achieving change.
"AAAHC principles are not unique to the setting. They are unique to the patients receiving them. If you take any [guideline] and apply it to the patients in your facility, [it] fit[s]," Dr. Desai said.
Accreditation can then be leveraged by any center to establish an infrastructure for internal education, culture change and measured outcomes.
3. View change as continuous and not a one-time transition. To gain accreditation, a center must undergo a continuous process that involves stating purpose, setting a performance goal, collecting and analyzing data, comparing data to the performance goal, implementing corrective action, measuring change and reviewing the project.
Dr. Desai said the accreditation process encourages ASCs to seek change that is holistic and forthcoming.
"All of us are going to be measured," Dr. Desai said. "So if we can use [measurements] to infiltrate that change into our entire organization, I think we'll be ahead of the game."
More articles about accreditation:
Blue Ridge Health awarded Joint Commission accreditations: 3 thoughts
AHA, ACC to offer cardiovascular accreditation services: 3 things to know
7 things AAAHC surveyors want ASCs to do before their next survey