The Intersocietal Accreditation Commission updated the standards and guidelines for Adult Echo accreditation in July 2017 with a December 1, 2017 effective date. The main changes to the adult echo standards is the mandate (versus option) to evaluate diastolic function on all studies, and to report on it. With this requirement followed the requirements for all ultrasound equipment to have Tissue Doppler Imaging capabilities.
Most people dread accreditation! The paperwork and the time is a drag! “How do you enjoy this?” is a question I hear often! I will let you in on a secret. Accreditation is a lot easier than people know! In addition, the entire team at IAC (Intersocietal Accreditation Commission) are phenomenal to work with! I wanted to spread the word that accreditation does not have to be as difficult as many make it! The IAC are not the echo police but rather friendly, smart and extremely helpful kind people. We interviewed Sue Jensen, a Senior Clinical Specialist at the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission to discuss the culture at IAC and to gain some insight on the accreditation process. We addressed common misconceptions about the accreditation process including delayed status, non-compliant staff and many other pearls of wisdom.
Let’s talk about some basic hemodynamics that take affect when evaluating mitral regurgitation (MR). We previously broke down the step by step process the heart encounters when dealing with acute & chronic MR. If you’ve missed or need refreshed on our previous blogs, you can find them here:
This month we reviewed radiation safety and patient-centered nuclear cardiology protocols. To close out our March focus on nuclear cardiology, this week we will review IAC nuclear accreditation requirements for on-going Quality Improvement (QI) and provide easy steps to creating your own program.
So over the past year we saw a lot of changes regarding the IAC accreditation quality improvement requirements across all modalities. Finally, as the dust settled we were left with a standardized program across the board. We expected the new QI to be difficult and time consuming so it took a while for us to get our head around just how simplified the whole system now is! We here at CardioServ are all loving the new workflow and we would like to share what we enjoy most about the new requirements.
ECHO AND VASCULAR LABS – ARE YOU READY FOR THE NEW SONOGRAPHER CREDENTIALING REQUIREMENTS?
As you may be aware in January 2017 the latest changes to the Echo and Vascular accreditation standards as set forth by the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission become effective. We have discussed the changes to the Quality Improvement Program in recent blogs. In this blog we will cover the changes to the sonographer credentialing and training requirements.
I hope you had a chance to review the current and upcoming changes to the QI program. It’s good to know that come the New Year things will really start to get easier with just 2 report reviews and 2 AUCs per quarter instead of the usual 10 report reviews per quarter and 30 AUC annually. Phew!
We provide our software clients with weekly eTutoring and the next 2 weeks we are reviewing the recent echo accreditation changes to the QI program and to the random audits. We wanted to share this information with all of you. This week, we will briefly review both the current changes in effect and the new changes that will kick in January 2017.
While vital for high-quality care, accreditation can be challenging and sometimes tedious for imaging departments. To help, this new article series will offer some tips for how to comply with the latest Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) Quality Improvement (QI) requirements with quality and ease, more specifically with test appropriateness and technical quality.
This is the final blog in our 6-part Accreditation Hack Series. It’s been great sharing our time saving hacks and our tips to streamline the accreditation process. By now you may have noticed one thing… here at CardioServ we love what we do! We are passionate about improving the quality of diagnostic imaging. It’s this passion that drives us to be relentless with our pursuit of excellence and steadfast in our commitment to improving the accreditation process for the diagnostic community. We believe in using an innovative process to give you a strategic advantage to successful accreditation.
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