Failing to qualify on the criteria set as standard by the CMS means healthcare facilities can potentially lose their accreditation. It may not happen right away after one survey, but depending on how many citations the facility receives and on what grounds, complete suspension of a medical care center’s CMS accreditation after just one survey is not beyond the realms of possibility either. To prevent anything like that from happening, go through the following tips.
Expect CMS Surveyors to Arrive Every Single day
Accreditation surveys are not conducted every day, of course, but the healthcare facility’s policies should be designed with that philosophy in mind. In other words, a facility should be adequately prepared to face an accreditation survey each and every workday by default, ensuring that at no point are those standards compromised. Maintaining the accreditation standards is what medical facilities are supposed to be able to do because that is part of the reason why they are allowed to operate.
However, even from a strictly managerial point of view, this is also a requirement if you wish to avoid CMS survey citations. Accreditation surveys from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are always unannounced and unpredictable, meaning that unless the facility sincerely adheres to the center’s specific standards at all times, it is only a matter of time before they receive their first citation.
Check for Changes
Sometimes, medical facilities lose their accreditation simply because they did not check with the CMS anytime soon to update their knowledgebase regarding what the regulations and standards are exactly. Changes in medical care standards are constant and in order to stay compliant with those changes, updated knowledge is extremely important. For example, did you know that even poor hospital/clinic design can lead to survey citations? Is your facility onboard with the CMS’s new Infection Control Program and Personnel Requirements?
Act Fast
All facilities need help to stay compliant with the changing policies and guidelines, but sometimes, the changes cannot be brought on immediately for a multitude of reasons, but acting on them is still important. For example, if an old hospital building is not energy-efficient at all, it would take time to make it so. When the management is already on their way to making the necessary changes, a CMS surveyor is more likely to be appreciative of the effort. On the other hand, if the surveyor doesn’t notice any effort being made to make the facility more compliant to new energy standards, that would go down as a negative point in their report. Lack of action comes off as a sign of ignorance or neglect; Both of which can lead to citations.
There are far more important criteria that a medical care facility should prioritize, of course, and they will play a greater role in deciding the outcome. Nevertheless, such secondary factors will begin to pile up against the facility in a surveyor’s report, if you let them pile up in real life.