The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Care (AAAHC) is the leader in health care accreditation with over 6,000 organizations being accredited by them. Being accredited by AAAHC demonstrates the LCO Health Center's commitment to provide high-quality care in a safe, friendly environment while including the patient in their health care decisions.
In 2015 the LCO Community Health Center switched its accreditation from Joint Commission to AAAHC. After an extensive two-day survey, the Health Center received accreditation for three years which expired in August 2018. In July of 2018 the LCO Health Center had a reaccreditation two-day survey.
The LCO Health Center passed its survey and retained its accreditation survey for another three years.
As part of the accreditation/reaccreditation process the Health Center is required to do a study to identify areas in the clinic where services can be improved. This study includes identifying the issue, creating a corrective action plan, implementing the corrective actions and reevaluating the service at the end of the study.
For this reaccreditation survey one of the three required studies the LCO Health Center presented was a study on Retinopathy for Diabetic Patients and the importance of diabetic patients receiving a retinopathy scan at least once a year.
In September, the Health Center submitted its Retinopathy study as a candidate for the Bernard A. Kershner Innovations in Quality Improvement Award given out by AAAHC.
The Bernard A. Kershner Innovations in Quality Improvement Award is an annual award which recognizes AAAHC-accredited organizations that successfully implemented meaningful changes in their operations to boot quality of care, patient safety and overall efficiency.
Bernard A. Kershner was a leader in ambulatory health care and distinguished past chair of the AAAHC Institute Board of Trustees.
There are six finalists selected to participate for this award. The finalists are chosen by an expert panel based on the ten elements AAAHC has set up for the submitted studies and the success of the study.
In October the LCO Health Center was notified the submitted study was selected as one of the six finalists for the award.
The winner of the award will be announced at the Achieving Accreditation Conference held March 15 - 16, 2019 in Tampa, Florida.
This is a very prestigious honor for the LCO Health Center as our study was chosen out of thousands of entries including entries submitted by many facilities who are much larger than the LCO clinic.
The LCO Health Center would like to thank everyone involved for making this study a success. A special thank you to Krista Strunk and Carolyn Debrot for their hard work and dedication to our patients.