How to prepare for CARF accreditation
If your facility is considering seeking CARF accreditation, here are tips from CARF and from those who have been through the process:
- Allow enough time. Accreditation usually takes from 12 to 16 months from the time you begin preparing to when you receive the results. If you already are accredited, allow six to eight months to prepare for a new survey. If you are a new facility, you must have used the standards for at least six months.
- Use a team approach to prepare. Include people from all levels and departments. For instance, involve marketing in meeting standards that include community involvement and consult plant engineering on standards concerning drills and evacuation issues.
- Take advantage of CARF resources as you prepare. CARF staff are there to help. Be sure to involve everyone on your team in a teleconference or e-mail to answer questions; if several people call about an issue, they may interpret the answers differently.
- Set aside adequate financial resources for the process. You may have to make changes to comply with the standards.
- A successful mock survey is no guarantee. Even if you hire a CARF surveyor to conduct a mock survey, remember that an official survey team will decide on accreditation.
- Make sure the entire staff understands your policies and procedures. CARF surveyors won’t confine their questions to management. They are likely to walk up to a ward clerk or nursing assistant and ask about a document or procedure.
- Conduct role-playing sessions with staff. Simulate the open-ended questions that surveyors might ask, such as, "What do you do if you receive a bomb threat?" or "How do you use outcomes information to make program changes?"
- Tell your staff that if they don’t understand a question they can ask for clarification.
- Remember that the surveyors don’t know your program. Make sure you can explain it to them clearly and concisely.
- Get someone who doesn’t usually handle your records to try to find information. This ensures that the information will be accessible to the surveyors, as well.
- Include surveyors in talks with CARF. If you disagree with a surveyor, include him or her in a conference call to the CARF office. Don’t call behind the surveyor’s back.
- Make sure there is a clean copy of the self-study materials for the survey team. Give it to them to study the night before the survey.
- Enlist as a driver between sites someone with whom surveyors need to talk. This allows transit time to become part of the survey process and cuts down on wasted time.
- On your application, specify travel time between multiple locations. The surveyors need this information to plan their days.
- If you don’t have a written policy on something, don’t try to write it at the last minute. The surveyors want to see policies the staff understand and can repeat.
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content