Articles
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Mastering Informed Consent
Questions posed during ACHCU’s monthly Coffee Chat live webinar often serve to reveal opportunities to extend education and develop additional resources for ACHC-accredited hospitals. In March 2025, the topic was medical record documentation.
The Home Care Plan of Care: Your Roadmap for Quality
Developing a plan of care that adheres to ACHC standards ensures that home care nursing services are delivered with efficiency, accountability, and compassion. By conducting thorough assessments, creating individualized care plans, continuously monitoring progress, and maintaining meticulous documentation, healthcare providers can enhance patient outcomes with consistent quality.
Why Your Accreditation End Date Matters
Achieving accreditation is regarded as one of the key benchmarks for measuring the quality of an organization. Once initial accreditation is achieved, it is not permanent and must be maintained and renewed to ensure continued compliance. ACHC Accreditation is valid for a 36-month time period but preparation for renewal should begin at least nine months before the expiration date. Resources are available to help you prepare.
Advance Directives Require Important Considerations
Advance directives rank among the most important legal documents in the healthcare setting. They come into use when a patient is incapacitated and cannot provide informed consent for care or cannot actively participate in care planning. Among the various types of advance directives, the most common in the healthcare setting are the living will and the durable power of attorney for health care.
Why It Matters to Maintain Personnel Records
Maintaining personnel records for staff members is required to achieve ACHC Accreditation and meet applicable state and federal regulations.
Assessing Competencies Helps Ensure Quality and Safety of Patient Care
Competencies are not just requirements in health care. They are crucial aspects. Competencies play pivotal roles in ensuring patient safety, quality and continuity of care, and operational efficiency. As a healthcare professional, your role in identifying and addressing competence-related issues is paramount.
Heads Up, Laboratories! Dengue Virus, Novel Influenza, and More
On June 25, 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Health Alert Network (HAN) message about an increased risk of dengue virus (DENV) infections in the United States in 2024.
Meet Record Requirements? New Form Simplifies Survey Prep
Client/patient records are a vital part of the accreditation survey process. When a Surveyor arrives for your on-site survey, your organization must provide several client/patient record reports during the opening conference.
Verifying Personnel Credentials Is a Crucial Task for Hospitals
Your latest hire might not be the healthcare professional you think you hired for your acute care hospital. Did you check? A multi-state scheme to sell fake nursing diplomas should serve as a crucial reminder about the importance of verifying credentials for all licensed personnel.
Have a Plan for When You Must Write a Plan of Correction
Nobody is perfectly perfect. Nearly all organizations surveyed for accreditation are cited for deficiencies. To get back on the right track, the organization must develop an effective Plan of Correction (POC) for each deficiency and promptly submit it for approval before a final accreditation status can be determined. It’s a process.