Alicia Plati, MPH, MBA is Director of Planning & Development for the Oklahoma City-County Health Department
Almost nothing is exciting about preparing for accreditation. So why am I excited? Because I love finding or creating tools that are both incredibly effective and remarkably simple.
Preparing for accreditation is complicated and requires a lot of organization. When the
Oklahoma City-County Health Department embarked on its accreditation journey, this seemed like a daunting task. To break down the challenge, we created an accreditation tracking tool that utilized an electronic spreadsheet (all you need is Microsoft Excel®) with multiple tabs, each representing a different
Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) domain. Within each domain, standards were listed above columns for measures, documentation needed, and division/program staff assignments for each. Our deadlines for rolling documentation submission were spread across approximately nine months.
After our agency was accredited, we breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated our accomplishment: We had met a challenging goal we had set for ourselves. But the relief was brief; we knew that our next task – maintaining accreditation – could be just as challenging.
But what if we applied what had already worked so well for us? What if we simply converted our accreditation preparation spreadsheet into an accreditation tracking spreadsheet? What if we assigned responsibilities by program and organizational division instead of by individual? What if we developed an agency-wide policy and procedure to integrate accreditation maintenance into every individual’s job description?
With these questions in mind, we decided to use our original spreadsheet for a new purpose: tracking our efforts to maintain accredited status. The
Accreditation Maintenance Tool is intended to be as simple as it seems, alternating domain reviews based on a simple calendar system. This is our attempt to create a thoughtful approach to accreditation that prevents “fire-drills” and enables us to truly embrace accreditation as a vehicle for improving how we do business agency-wide.
We are excited to share this approach and the accompanying spreadsheet with you. This is what is working for the Oklahoma City-County Health Department. I hope this tool helps you to prepare for accreditation and to maintain hard-won accreditation status.