Why Accreditation?

The accreditation process helps the facility define and actualize its strengths, identify and improve weaknesses, and recognize opportunities to enhance processes. The review process provides a road map to identify gaps, change processes, and starts the journey to improve cardiac patient care.

Benefits of Accreditation

• Improves quality outcomes  
• Gives facilities a competitive advantage
• Streamlines processes that improve the quality of cardiac care and reduce waste
• Allows facilities to examine and benchmark their processes to the latest “evidence-based” best practices 
• Reduces the liability of missed MIs through a consistent approach to risk stratification of the ACS patient based on research and best practices 
• Provides consultation and on-site review of processes by a team of experts
• Improves the "bottom line"
• Allows the facility to make business and clinical decisions based on metrics
• Establishes the facility’s commitment to higher standards
• Demonstrates to the community the facility’s commitment and dedication to providing exceptional cardiac care
• Improves relationships and integrates processes with EMS and Dispatch Services
• Creates a team approach to treatment; helps you get the best results from the resources already available at your institution 
• Provides an adaptable and proven approach that can be used by hospitals
• Allows risk stratification of patients for placement in the most cost-effective and appropriate manner

Heart Failure Accreditation can help facilities avoid RAC issues.

A federal audit program, commonly referred to as RAC (Recovery Audit Contractor), was created in 2003 to pay incentives to third-party contractors to identify and recover improper payments paid to healthcare providers in fee-for-service Medicare. Heart failure admission is one of the hospital services that has been targeted as an area of potential overpayment.

Heart Failure Accreditation can help facilities avoid RAC issues in the following ways:

• Encouraging the consistent use of standardized order sets to ensure appropriate documentation and evidence-based care.
• Providing the tools necessary to assist facilities in their effort to avoid costs associated with frequent readmissions due to inappropriate discharge instructions, poor medication strategies, lack of primary provider follow-up, and ineffective patient education.
• Providing Bi PAP and CPAP protocols developed in collaboration with EMS, in an effort to decrease intubations resulting in a reduction hospital acquired pneumonias subsequent higher acuity settings.
• Bringing teams together to evaluate internal processes and break down barriers.
• Assisting facilities in the development an educational plans to link quality patient care with RAC strategies, including improved documentation.
• Helping facilities differentiate observation short stay order sets — observation patients require more assertive treatment on the front end this results in decreased inpatient admissions if these patients are treated appropriately.
• Assisting facilities in the collection of metrics to assure that their processes are meeting clinical and financial goals.
• Making sure administrative support is in place to assure that barriers do not exist.
• Ensuring multi- disciplinary and multi-skilled teams including partnerships with outpatient resources such as home health or ambulatory heart failure clinics, are put into place to close the gap in the continuum of care and overcome barriers regarding patient compliance issues.