Selected staff participated in a second Kaizen Event in early August.  You may recall that “Kaizen” is a method to accelerate process improvement in any setting. This Kaizen focused on the specifics of the workflow for the Call Center Certification Program, e.g., when, where and how data is collected. To streamline the process, the team reviewed Parts 1 and 2 of the demographic questions currently required for completion by each applicant, with an eye toward eliminating duplicative questions or questions that have no bearing on the accreditation process. Of the 88 questions, the team recommended the elimination of all but 16. Of the remaining 16 questions, eight currently exist in SalesForce, four will be transmitted to AccreditNet, which then leaves only eight questions to be completed by the client. This streamlined approach translates to significant time savings for our clients!

The quality of healthcare provided in this country is not optimal. We know this either through personal circumstance or through evidence-based reports, such as the National Healthcare Quality Report published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Reports like these highlight the need for improvement of the quality of care in the United States. But how do we improve?

We have invited URAC-accredited clients and other stakeholders to review the proposed measures and share their comments and recommendations during our public comment period, which began Tuesday, July 18, 2017 and will close on Thursday, August 31, 2017.

We are pleased to announce that the web-based measure portal opened on July 1 for the submission of 2016 performance measures.