HQAA Blog

One of my funniest memories from surveying was many years ago at a small DME company in the Midwest. The staff was pleasant and accommodating and had been well prepared for the survey. But for some reason (probably related to a co-worker’s retelling of a “bad” survey that she’d gone through), the staff was pretty nervous about the accreditation visit. I pride myself on NOT presenting an intimidating attitude, but the staff at this place thought I was the police, the IRS, and the guy in charge of the Inquisition rolled into one. I tried my best to put the staff at ease. At one point, I asked a customer service representative about how they conveyed information on the patient’s rights and responsibilities to new customers. She fumbled through a pretty good answer. I asked her if she could name one of the responsibilities and she answered that they need to inform the company if they move or if their insurance changes (a good answer). I asked her if she could name a right and she froze up. Finally, she took a deep breath and blurted out: “The right to remain silent”.

DME owners and managers often cite quality improvement (QI) and/or performance improvement (PI) as one of the most difficult concepts to understand and one of the most difficult programs to implement within their businesses. And industry consultants and surveyors find the so-called QI Standards some of the most frequently cited standards for deficiencies and recommendations, and one of the areas in which they spend the most consultative time educating companies.

I’m not going to name names, but many years ago, as a young surveyor, I was inspecting delivery vehicles at a place (the location will remain unnamed) and observed one of the worst safety hazards I ever saw in my career. A delivery technician who covered a two-state territory had been in the adjacent state where fireworks were legal, and decided to stock up for the

The very first standard in the HQAA Accreditation Standards is ORG 1 MISSION & VISION. The “mission & vision” standard is the first standard for a reason: the mission and vision set the tone for your organization’s corporate culture and define who you are and why you exist. They represent not only what your organization does, but why it does it. The “how it does it” will come later with the various policies & procedures, but this first standard talks about something more basic and philosophical.

Accreditation documentation requirements for the human resource files are relatively straightforward, yet the human resource (“HR”) standards continue to be some of the most frequently cited standards and generate the most questions from DME customers. HQAA’s recent standards revisions and updates included several of the HR standards. This fact, along with the continued questions and citations for HR standards suggest it was time to revisit the personnel file and review expectations.

On February 2^nd, the movie “GROUNDHOG DAY” played almost continuously on a cable station.  You couldn’t miss it if you tried.  Funny, and –dare I say— “timeless”, the movie is about a guy stuck in a pattern of repeating the day over and over and over again.  Humor ensues, but the theme is his frustration with living the same tired old day out repeatedly.  It’s very frustrating to see the same mistakes made repeatedly and its human nature to try to correct those mistakes.  Thus, the revised standards.

Harry Truman, the 33^rd President of the United States had a famous slogan, which appeared on a plaque on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here”. Referring to “passing the buck”; that is, shifting blame or responsibility, the saying demonstrates a person’s willingness and ability to take responsibility, find solutions, and lead by example.

A dictionary defines disclosure as “the action of making new information known or the action or process of revealing information.” In the medical world, healthcare providers define disclosure as “a release of information to persons or entities other than the patient who is the subject of the information.”

Those of us who have been in the DME industry for enough years remember when every DME organization in the country had a storage room full of vertical files and/or bank boxes full of old patient records. The boxes were stored in piles, often piled up to the ceiling. Usually there were labels or writing on the boxes—something like “April 1987-January 1988” or “1990—A-L”. The boxes and filing cabinets were full of manila and Pend-a-flex folders labeled with patient names and chock full of medical records, billing information, social security numbers, dates of birth, and enough demographic information to make a telemarketer’s day.

It's tempting to believe that those Amazon trucks that zip down your street every day are a completely new phenomenon. But if you believed that, you’d be wrong. Today, Amazon trucks descend on neighborhoods bringing appliances, clothes, books & music, and even groceries. A generation earlier, we ordered music from flyers in the newspaper—carefully selecting stamps with our favorite titles and sticking them on the order page, promising to buy four or five additional albums in return for a half dozen free ones up front. And the generation before that ordered small appliances and kitchenware from Jewel T men. And the generation before that could order up a mail order “kit house” from the Sears Roebuck Catalog. Truth be told, mail order is as old as the mail itself. Subsequent generations have refined the practice over the last century and a half; but the practice of mail order anything is not new!