The Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) is moving forward with enhanced Standards in version 41 of its Accreditation Handbook for Ambulatory Health Care. For more than 40 years, AAAHC has provided facilities with relevant standards and education for improvement of their patient care environment. The new version of the handbook includes new or notably revised Standards and applies to all organizations seeking non-Medicare Deemed Status (non-MDS) accreditation with AAAHC.
The v41 Standards reflect comments received from stakeholders, including the AAAHC Standards Development Committee, client organizations, surveyors, partners, and staff. Organizations will find the updates contain moderate realignment of a few Standards for chapter applicability and cohesion. Also, elements of compliance have been capped at a maximum of seven for balanced focus within each Standard. For ease of review and implementation, the handbook contains a crosswalk identifying changes from the previous version.
“AAAHC anticipates a seamless transition to the v41 Standards that will enhance an organization’s quality improvement efforts,” said AAAHC Board Chair, Ira Cheifetz, DMD. “We have prepared educational webinars for AAAHC accredited organizations on Standards updates. Additionally, our upcoming virtual Achieving Accreditation programs will address these changes.”
The v41 Standards support AAAHC’s 1095 Strong, quality every day philosophy, which is a commitment to ongoing education and quality improvement. 1095 Strong demonstrates survey readiness not only on the day of the survey but all 1,095 days of the accreditation term.
AAAHC will be launching the v41 Standards at the ASCA 2020 Virtual Conference & Expo July 9 – 10, providing an opportunity for organizations to connect with staff to answer questions.
AAAHC plans to release v41 of the Accreditation Handbook for Medicare Deemed Status (MDS) later this summer.
