Best Practices Accreditation Checklist - A Tool To Prepare for NAPBS Accreditation
By Eric Rinsky-President of Apollo Services Inc.
By now, many of you have seen the article published by the
Accreditation Task Force regarding
the NAPBS® Accreditation Program
in last week's NAPBS Thursday Letter.
The message is loud and clear: Start
preparing for the NAPBS Accreditation
Program now because the task force has
every intention of rolling this out at the
annual conference in April 2009.
On behalf of The Best Practices SubCommittee
for the Accreditation
Checklist, Eric Rinsky and Dave Furey
presented a checklist at the Mid-year
Meeting in Arizona to help member
companies prepare for the upcoming
accreditation. Joining the presentation
were three long-time members of
the NAPBS and the Best Practices
Committee, representing different CRAs.
Kerstin Bagus, Judy Gootkind and Nancy
Roberts all spoke about their experience
with the audit process and the benefits of
preparation. For those of you who did not
attend, these three speakers exemplified
professionalism with their knowledge
regarding the audit process and our
industry in general.
The presentation can now be found on
the NAPBS Website under "Membership
Home." There you will see "Accreditation
Program" where you can tind the
standards and the checklist. Additionally,
you can tind the actual presentation we
gave (NAPBSAccreditation Checklist
Presentation) under "Conference
Presentations."
The checklist is a simple document
encompassing the standards' criteria. It is
how your company will use this checklist
that will matter. This can be a dynamic
tool for accreditation or any pre-audit if
used properly.
How the tool can be used
and what it can enable your
organization to do:
It provides a raw, realistic perspective
on what policies and procedures
are in place and what policies and
procedures still need implementation.
The checklist requires materials to
prove compliance in specific areas.
An actual audit would require
the same. Therefore, it will help
to establish which materials are
needed for an auditor.
Achecklist will serve as the
foundation for information pertaining
to any audits.
It allows you to step outside of your
organization to gain a perspective
of your own operations.
It assigns an auditor. The auditor
will ask to examine any existing
written policies and/or procedures
which you may have produced. It
will identify these items or lack of
items per accreditation standards in
your self-audit.
Additionally, the auditor will
ask to interview key personnel
or workers in order to develop
(or update) their understanding
of the operations being audited.
During this stage of the audit,
the auditor will typically look for
exhibits (flowchart, narrative or
questionnaire).
It establishes a timeline. This
checklist will only work until the
accreditation is rolled out. It can then
be used for any type of future audit.
Helpful Industry Resources
for Policy Writing:
NAPBS (www.napbs.com)
Provider guidelines
Industry conferences-past vand present
White papers
SOCIT (Standardization of Common Industry Terms)
Best Practices Verifications
Guide for Employers
RB Publications (www.brbpub.com)
Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov)
The focus of our presentation was
to make the checklist available to
membership in order to help prepare
your company for the upcoming NAPBS
accreditation process. This means taking
a pro-active approach instead of waiting
for the accreditation to come and then
feeling unprepared or overwhelmed.
Again, the checklist itself is a simple
document. However, if used effectively it
will serve as an extremely powerful tool
for the accreditation process and other
future audits.
"Success depends upon previous
preparation, and without such
preparation there is sure to be
failure. J) (Confucius).
For additional information please
contact:
Eric Rinsky, president
Apollo Services Ine.
eric@apolloservices.org
DaveFurey, technical operations manager
Validex
dfurey@validex.com
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