Article Highlights
- The problem: A lengthy accreditation prep process
- The solution: PowerStandards, an accreditation management software
- The benefits: Increase accreditation preparedness, ensure EMS compliance, and save time
The problem: Lengthy accreditation prep and self-assessments
EMS accreditation shows citizens and stakeholders that your agency holds itself to high standards. But if you rely on manual accreditation preparation, you no doubt associate accreditation with stress – likely a lot of it. And it’s easy to understand why. Paper-based processes are disorganized and cumbersome, making assessment preparation more time-consuming and inefficient than it needs to be.
Using manual systems makes it difficult to stay up-to-date with ever-evolving accreditation standards. Even when you’re aware of changes, you must spend excessive time finding your existing policies before updating them to maintain compliance. These documents may be hidden in unorganized filing cabinets, pushed to the back of desk drawers, or sitting in dusty file folders. If you forget to update just one document, you risk EMS staff referring to the wrong policy in the future, exposing your agency to increased liability risk.
Because manual processes don’t provide a streamlined way to communicate changes to staff, it’s challenging to ensure every employee is informed – and all but impossible to support better accountability across your agency. This results in staff who are noncompliant with the latest EMS rules and regulations, placing first responders and citizens at risk in the field and jeopardizing your ability to achieve or maintain accreditation.
The solution: Accreditation management software
PowerDMS’s accreditation management software, PowerStandards, simplifies the accreditation preparation process. You can use this software to maintain compliance with EMS rules and regulations by centralizing standards manuals in one cloud-based location, streamlining collaboration, and facilitating mock assessments.
Electronic standards manuals and mapping
PowerDMS partners with more than 60 state and national accrediting bodies and provides users access to over 250 standards manuals, including the CPSE/CFAI Accreditation Model. As you pursue accreditation, you can map your policies and procedures to these standards so you always maintain compliance. Simply upload policies, procedures, or other proofs of compliance (such as documents, videos, or images), then link them to relevant standards.
You’ll receive automated alerts whenever an accrediting body changes these standards so that you can update all associated policies. You can also digitally highlight and label areas of a document to emphasize how it meets standards, making the EMS accreditation process as efficient as possible.
Task management and collaboration tools
PowerStandards also helps you manage assignments and collaborate with team members while you prepare for accreditation. You can create automated tasks – whether one-time or recurring – that are associated with specific standards, then assign these standards to team members. These tasks appear in employee to-do lists so staff can upload narratives and evidence of compliance with that standard. Then, review the system’s dashboards to track staff progress towards completing these assigned tasks and ensure the EMS accreditation process is on schedule.
Self-assessments
After you’ve collected and updated all accreditation documentation, use PowerStandards to perform a mock assessment before your on-site visit. Reviewers can leave comments and upload documentation to accreditation standards, which you can then view to make any required changes or secure for future reference and records. Additionally, reviewers can set a “met” or “not met” status on each standard that you can export for analysis and inclusion in the final visit report. You can also track your accreditation self-assessment progress with dashboards, including viewing status reports broken down by standard.
The benefits of compliance document management software
PowerStandards streamlines accreditation preparation to reduce stress and save your EMS agency valuable resources. In addition to reducing the time and money required for on-site assessments, you can:
- Be audit-ready 50% faster than a paper-based process.
- Save $11k in paper and printing costs by using a cloud-based system.
Because this accreditation management software facilitates ongoing policy updates, you don’t need to scramble to prepare for your assessment in the six to 12 months leading up to an on-site visit. Instead, you can guarantee your policies are always up-to-date by mapping them to an accrediting body’s standards and evaluating your assessment readiness throughout the accreditation cycle. As a result, you can always ensure your EMS staff remain well-informed of all policies so they provide the best emergency medical services possible and your agency maintains accreditation.
Get started
Ready to reduce the stress associated with EMS accreditation prep? Schedule a demo today to learn how PowerStandards can help your agency streamline your process.