CARF Accreditation and Consulting News

There’s a condition suffered by many CARF accredited organizations and well known to those of us who help those organizations get accredited – CARF Recommendation Phobia. It can strike even the most seasoned organization. The symptoms include:

• An allergic-like responses to a CARF surveyor using the word “Recommendation” during a survey, typically followed by near endless arguing with the surveyor.
• Comparing recommendations with other organizations (i.e., “how many did you guys get?”).
• Contracts with surveyors that specify the maximum number of recommendations they can receive.

Succession planning in the context of global recruitment and retention challenges across health and human services is difficult, to say the least. According to Mercer’s study, the United States alone will need to hire 2.3 million new healthcare workers by 2025 to keep up with the population. Unfortunately, CARF’s succession planning standards don’t make things any easier. So let’s walk it through and arrive at a common sense approach.

Topic Area: Evaluation

I’ve gone into a few rants over the past few months about the use of the client goal achievement or goal attainment (loosely described) as a measure of program outcomes. So I decided it’s time to move from ranting to writing!

In 2018, the Accreditation Consulting Group (ACG) is proud to announce that we worked with approximately 10% of all the organizations seeking their initial accreditation. All such organizations had a positive accreditation thus saving money by not requiring another survey in the following year and saving staff time/expense in efficiently preparing for the accreditation survey.  ACG worked with both large and very small providers across the various divisions of CARF.  Fees and services have been customized to meet the needs of the organizations seeking accreditation in order to be cost effective. 

Many organizations still hire a consultant even though they have been successful in the past with their CARF surveys – even when the last few surveys have resulted in a three-year accreditation outcome.  The form of consulting under these circumstances is typically short-term.  It may make sense to do a mock survey in order to get ready.  In other cases, it may just be a matter of a few hours of consulting to verify that changes that have occurred within the organization since the last CARF survey are still meeting the standards. 

There are times when an organization receives an outcome of less than three-years.  In some cases, the organization is in dispute with the accreditation outcome that resulted in a one-year or non-accreditation outcome.  Other times, the decision was very close.  CARF has a very detailed appeal process the addresses such situations when the organization feels the outcome is incorrect.  If your organization finds itself in this situation, it is highly advisable to hire a consultant to guide your organization through the process.