Speed Up Assessment Prep with Compliance Document Management

Article Highlights

• The problem: Preparation for accreditation is time-consuming and inefficient
• The solution: PowerStandards, an accreditation and compliance management system
• The benefits: Reduce assessment prep time, maintain ECC compliance, and boost collaboration

The problem: Slow ECC assessment prep

As a public service provider, your emergency communications center is always looking for ways to showcase its excellence and professionalism. You know that attaining accreditation is one way to demonstrate accountability to your community. But conducting assessment prep for accreditation can be challenging and time-consuming, especially with limited staff resources. You may find it increasingly difficult to complete the tasks that make accreditation possible. That’s because accreditation prep requires extensive resources, including staff time spent gathering documents, checking for compliance, and conducting mock assessments.

Additionally, if you don’t have any compliance management systems in place, documents can quickly become disorganized and scattered throughout your agency. Inefficient document management makes it even more cumbersome to gather all required compliance information, further slowing down the process.

Limited collaboration tools within your organization also make it difficult to self-review before an onsite assessment. This adds a layer of uncertainty and stress as staff struggle to determine whether they’ve gathered and updated all requisite information. The worst part? All the time spent on your slow ECC assessment prep processes means staff have less energy to dedicate to great public safety services.

The solution: ECC software for compliance document management

Preparation for accreditation doesn’t have to be so time-consuming. PowerStandards by PowerDMS streamlines document management and collaboration to help your agency meet ECC compliance requirements. With this ECC software tool, you can increase the productivity of your limited resources and speed up the assessment prep process.

Because PowerDMS publishes and maintains the electronic standards manuals of more than 60 accrediting bodies, you can easily prepare for assessments by comparing your policies to existing standards. PowerStandard tools like digital highlighting and policy linking, discussed in the table below, also help make this possible. And if you can’t find the accreditation manual you need, PowerStandards can convert most standards manuals for use in the system.

PowerDMS’s ECC software also provides task management and collaboration tools that make it straightforward to compile, update, and maintain compliance documents. You can use PowerStandards to create automated, recurring tasks associated with specific standards, then assign these tasks to relevant staff. As employees upload narratives and evidence of compliance, use PowerStandards’ dashboard to track their progress and ensure timely preparation for accreditation.

Once you collect and update all relevant documentation, PowerStandards can also help you perform a self-assessment. Before an onsite visit, upload relevant documents to specific standards, then allow reviewers or visitors to leave comments so you can make any necessary changes. Wrap up the process by saving these comments for your records to speed up the reaccreditation process for next time.

The benefits of compliance management systems

PowerStandards speeds up assessment prep time by 50% when compared to paper-based processes. Improved efficiency means your agency can dedicate limited staff time to other important tasks, like cultivating positive relationships with the partners who help your agency thrive.

PowerDMS’s compliance management system also allows you to maintain continuous compliance and accountability across the agency. With PowerStandards, your agency has a well-managed and easily accessible repository of all your proofs of compliance, mapped to specific standards. This ensures that you’re not only prepared for accreditation, but also demonstrates your staff is informed, compliant, and ready to provide the best public safety services possible.

Get started

If you’re ready to learn more about how PowerStandards can support your emergency communications center accreditation prep, schedule a demo today.