What Is Accreditation?

ACCHD ACCREDITATION NEWS
EDITION ONE
OCTOBER 2016

What is Accreditation?

• The measurement of health department performance against a set of nationally recognized, practice-focused and evidenced-based standards.
• The issuance of recognition of achievement of accreditation within a specified time frame by a nationally recognized entity.
• The continual development, revision, and distribution of public health standards.
The goal of the voluntary national accreditation program is to improve and protect the health of the public by advancing the quality and performance of Tribal, state, local, and territorial public health departments.

Why do we want to be accredited?

–It will Identify our strengths and areas for improvement
–It will Strengthen our internal and external partnerships
–It will Encourage our health department to prioritize and address long-standing concerns
–It will Act as a “stimulus…for continuous quality improvement and
performance management in our daily practice.”
– It will Improve our management processes
– It will Stimulate greater accountability and transparency within the ACCHD
– Allowed our health department to document its capacity to deliver the three core functions and Ten Essential Public Health Services.
– It will make us Accountable to external stakeholders
– it will help us compete for funding opportunities
– it will improve our Communication with the governing entity.
What is PHAB? ThePublic Health Accreditation Board(PHAB) is the official accrediting body for national public health department accreditation. PHAB is working to promote and protect the health of the public by advancing the quality and performance of all public health departments in the United States through national public health department accreditation.

/

Where are we in the process?

WThe

The Acchd, in partnership with fcfc, finished the community health assessment (CHA) in 2015.

Rebecca, our Accreditation intern, has started to develop our community health improvement plan (CHIP), which is a direct result of our Cha.

The Strategic planning team, consisting of staff and board members,have met several times to determine where the ACCHD is headed, what we hope to achieve, the steps to get there, and how to measure our success. so far the SP team has reviewed and modified the Vision, Mission, and values, as well as identified priorities for our future on which to build the implementation plan.

And lastly, we had our kickoff meeting with our team leaders to start the process of breaking down into our domain groups. we watched the online video from phab’s website called “an overview of public health department accreditation.”

This month’s domain spotlight:

Domain 7: ACCESS to Care

This team is lead by Dani with members Jennifer and jenna

They will be looking for ways to promote strategies to improve access to health care.