This is my first April in DC. As I write this, the cherry blossoms are about to “pop” around the city and a few of the early trees are already looking like popcorn. Baseball season is about to start and everyone is seeing the end of the cold weather. It’s an exciting time for me in DC, although I miss my family.

Yesterday, I was able to “sneak” out of the office to visit my first Measures workshop over at the hotel by Georgetown. I stood in the back of the room and listened to a question and answer session lead by our Quality experts. The speakers did a wonderful job of answering questions and explaining some of the nuances of the data collection process to the attendees from around the country. The experience and expertise of our people was clear to everyone. We are fortunate to have such talented people and their influence is seen in the quality work being done by our organization and the groups we work with.

At a break, I was able to introduce myself and share some of my background and philosophy with the attendees. I shared my work experience and how we were working to make accreditation and recognition more meaningful and to bring best practices to all we do. I also told them that we are working to improve our communication and customer service; transparency and simplification with standards updating; and add outcomes measures where we can; so URAC stays meaningful in the changing healthcare landscape. I told them we would be working to launch new programs in areas where our expertise could help consumers. I told them we would simplify where we can, but we would never compromise on supporting quality care. I gave everyone my email address and told them to reach out to me if they had issues or suggestion on how to make our work better.

After I spoke, I visited with several attendees. Several of them complimented our account services people and even shared names of those who they thought went above and beyond in communicating or solving problems. One person told me that working with URAC had helped her organization and sometimes she had used “because URAC says so” to motivate her team to make changes even when we didn’t have a requirement. She said our authority and expertise were recognized throughout the country as the standard for quality. That’s great to hear about our organization – thank you.