Saturday, January 24, 2015

What It Takes To Get UHMS Accreditation

By Janine Hughes


The primary goal for the freestanding hyperbaric clinic should be to attain the Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) accreditation. This is for obvious reasons; it is the way to stay in business for long. It assures other players that services offered by the facility are beyond reproach. Although it requires heavy investment to attain quality in all aspects, the benefits that follow are immense. The referrals from physicians and other medical practitioners increase while the medical insurers trust the institution with their clients are willing to reimburse any expenses without too much negotiation. Normally, the UHMS accreditation is voluntary; however, the process of attaining it is rigorous.

The accreditation processes is not very easy; the facilities have to meet stringent standards set by the body, and provide data to prove their conformity with the set requirements. The data to be provided focuses on policies and procedure, hyperbaric medicine quality offered, and patient safety and outcomes.

In order to ascertain this, the health care facility has to be surveyed by a team from the UHMS. In addition to above data, they have to gather data on training processes, the equipment operation and maintenance, and the safety standards in place.

Good consultants should provide insight into the scope, time, and the resources necessary for the center to improve from its current status to the level that meets the survey requirements.

Ideally, there are a number of benefits that come from using a third party to guide the facility before the UHMS team come for the survey. They give a detailed report with the guideline of what should be done and when. This detailed interrelationship between the tasks to be completed and the resources necessary for the same ensures that the clinic is able to meet the standards on the right time without wastage of resources. In some instances, the consultants also help in the actual performance of some of the tasks.

Normally, the team from the UHMS conducts a survey in very wide areas within the facility. The areas of focus include fire protection, ventilation, fabrication, and the electrical installation of the chamber. For the patients, the issues to be examined include the patient rights, care, assessment, and education. In addition to this, the human resource, leadership, professional development, teaching, research and publication, information management, medical gas system, and environmental sustenance are also surveyed.

For human resources, the data in regards to professional development, qualification, training, leadership and the numbers are considered. Other areas include research and development, teaching, publication, information management, and environmental sustainability.

This in essence means more referrals to the facility as physicians are confident with the quality of health provision from this institution. The insurers will also be willing to reimburse the clinic that is accredited and more qualified health providers get attracted by the hospital. It translates to higher income.




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