HQAA designed their application and accreditation processes to be user friendly. Achieving accreditation, especially for a new startup organization, can be stressful as a company navigates what can seem bureaucratic and complicated waters in pursuit of their accreditation. But, never fear: HQAA has set up easily accessible resources to smooth those processes and guide your organization.

Today, let’s look at four of the most helpful resources that every organization has access to during their journey to accreditation. These resources are available on the HQAA website.

• RESOURCES ~ DOCUMENTS/LINKS
• SORTABLE STANDARDS
• POWER PACKS
• BLOG

RESOURCES ~ DOCUMENTS/LINKS

To access this treasure trove of information, simply go to www.HQAA.org and go to the drop-down menu for “resources”. Then select “documents/links” and you open up the door to seemingly limitless information. The CMS Supplier Standards are there, as well as the CMS Quality Standards. Documents outlining the AARC (Respiratory Therapist professional organization) Practice Guidelines, Record Retention Laws by State, and links to OIG, Florida’s AHCA, and lists of certified surety bond companies are all there. Think of it as “everything you need to know about DME”. EVERYTHING might not be in there, but there’s a lot of helpful answers to questions, forms, documents, and hyperlinks to websites with the answers.

Pro Tip: Be sure to check out the Palmetto GBA site, which houses a state licensing database including contact information for all states requiring any type of state license in DME. It’s all in one place and the research has literally been done for you. This resource is a must for any company opening in any state, including existing companies that are seeking to expand into new geographical territories or companies that are adding product lines to an already existing scope of service.

SORTABLE STANDARDS

HQAA’s standards are interactive. When you describe your scope of service and product lines during the application process, HQAA populates a set of standards that are unique to your company and their scope. Thus, if you are doing clinical respiratory services or providing ventilators, you will see not only general DME standards, but also standards specific to the products and services you offer. If you don’t carry those products or offer that service, you won’t see confusing standards that are not applicable to your organization.

We’ve also set up the standards in such a way that they can be sorted. For instance, you can sort out standards that require written policies. That list can literally be the table of contents to your policy manual. Thus, you are instructed regarding what policies HQAA will be looking for as you apply for accreditation and again during the survey.

Be sure to check out this “key” which easily sorts HQAA standards by various categories. Each category link gives you the complete list of standards that require written policy/procedure, standards that have requirements for documents, standards that the surveyor will assess by visualizing when on site, and required postings.

To sort the standards by requirements, or to obtain a printable copy, click any of the following icons:

 On Site Surveyor
 Policy and Procedure Manual
 Visible and/or accessible
 Required documents

POWER PACKS

I love the name of this resource and I’ve pointed countless organizations to these helpful little nuggets. Think of Power Packs as condensed, high quality pieces of advice. The HQAA team has assembled them based on frequently asked questions and areas that many organizations have struggled with in the past.

Power Packs are available to companies while they are in the workroom (pre-survey) phase of their accreditation cycle. They are pinned to specific standards where questions come up and pop up as available as you work in the workroom. For instance, while you are in the Human Resource area of the workroom, you’ll see links to Power Packs such as Personnel File Audit Template, Links to web-based in-service programs, Competency Program Checklists, and information on the OIG Exclusions Database and what the OIG requirements are for DME and pharmacy organizations.

The advice is timely since you see it as you work on that particular part of the workroom. You can read it, download forms, follow links, and benefit from questions and issues that have arisen before for other organizations. Currently, there are more than a dozen of them and HQAA is constantly re-evaluating where new, timely Power Packs would help.

BLOG

Finally, allow me some shameless self-promotion. Just to the right of the Resources tab on the HQAA homepage, there’s a drop down for the HQAA Blog. Yours truly has been authoring the blog articles for many years now and I’ve covered most standards, addressed common questions, and tried to impart timely and useful advice about accreditation, compliance, and other topics of interest in the DME community. The link is:

https://info.hqaa.org/HQAA-blog

You can bookmark it and read it approximately once a month or so when they come up. Even better, you can search the topics by key words, tags, or topics. You can leave comments or questions and you can also suggest topics. If you have any topics you’d like to see addressed, please feel free to leave me a comment or drop me a line.

The process of achieving and maintaining accreditation can seem overwhelming. But using these available resources, which are accessible on your computer 24/7, should make the process less intimidating and more manageable.