Read the "Home Care: Accreditation Scenario" located in the Allied Health Community.

Scenario

Many families choose to place their elderly loved ones in this assisted living facility because it has a reputation as a caring and passionate provider of care throughout the United States. The facility has 225 efficiency apartments, furnished and equipped with the latest technology, in this segment of the health care industry.

The assisted living facility administrator has provided some thoughts regarding the future of the facility, especially regarding some recently acquired survey results. Although most scores were very good, there seems to be a trend of some scores actually dropping, which causes concern. These lower scores seem to be associated with issues related to communications between the assisted living staff and resident family members, specifically among the Nursing Assistants, Registered Nurses, Social Services, and family members. Although the patients are providing high scores for their experiences, the families are more critical and thorough with the surveys.

The assisted living administrator has done some research regarding the Arizona Health Care Assisted Living Accreditation Agency and discovered that the agency possesses a very highly touted program that will provide postmodern systems, processes, and procedures to ensure that the assisted living facility complies with the very highest standards, including refreshed criteria for caregivers, especially in the areas of communication and effective patient-family-caregiver protocols. The administrator also found the agency has an initial accreditation process that involves a comprehensive internal audit of all facility functions. Every department, including executive management, human resources, accounting, nursing, social services, dietary, grounds/maintenance, and others will be thoroughly inventoried, including their policies, procedures, and the review of all employee records. Once approved, the assisted living facility will be provided an initial accreditation. After one year, the assisted living facility will apply for reaccreditation on an annual basis.

The executive staff, upon the assisted living administrator's recommendation, has approved the initiative of gaining this high level of accreditation. The Vice President of Human Resources has been given the directive of pursing the accreditation. Consider the following questions:

Questions:

1. What type of accreditation does an assisted living facility need?

2. What are the pros and cons for accreditation? What tools would you use to evaluate the pros and cons?

3. What stakeholders would you include? How would you ensure your primary, secondary, tertiary stakeholders are informed?