WHY ACCREDITATION MATTERS
When it comes to home care and home healthcare, accreditation is paramount.
In short: Accreditation matters because your loved one matters. Accreditation affects quality of care, reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, and ensures continual quality checks over time.
Accreditation is a way to earn the public’s trust by establishing a mark of excellence, thereby setting a home care or home healthcare organization apart from all others, and making it easy for consumers to recognize quality when choosing a provider.
The Standards of Accreditation provide a framework that has proven over time to enable home healthcare organizations to become recognized as high quality, reliable, safe, accountable, and professional care providers.
Quality of Care:
Allowing a stranger to take care of a loved one is hard. Who can you trust? How do you know they are trustworthy? Accreditation is the answer. Several accreditation bodies provide oversight to home healthcare agencies. This scrutiny requires a rigorous level of service, adherence to latest guidelines and high standards, and more. Agencies who have passed this scrutiny at great expense of both time and money work harder to hire and retain only the most qualified caregivers.
Accreditation is proof of a continuous process of quality control. So, it innately provides assurance of quality, security, honesty, legality of the business, business operations, the staff, and all guidelines, policies, and procedures.
Accreditation offers clients/care recipients continuity with their caregiver, which is important to build secure relationships for best outcomes. It’s a win-win.
Without quality assurance people can get hurt - physically, emotionally and financially. Because of this, AHHD only lists accredited home healthcare providers on this directory.
Reimbursement:
While helping our own friends and family members find home healthcare, we discovered along the process that accreditation affects services that get reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid as well as the level at which they are reimbursed.
State certification and accreditation ARE NOT the same thing. (For more information on the differences between certification and accreditation, click here.)
Both Medicare and Medicaid reimburse accredited home healthcare providers at higher rates for longer periods of time. Secondary insurances may often do the same.
On this directory, we only link to accredited providers who have been accredited by the Joint Commission (formerly known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations - JCAHO), Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP), and/or Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC).
Note: Since healthcare is subject to the ever-changing state and federal laws, this statement should in no way be construed to guarantee any type of reimbursement.
Choosing a care giver for yourself or a loved one is too big a decision to make without knowing "what you don't know". Caregivers can bring security and friendship into someone’s life.
Whether you are looking for home care or home healthcare, understanding how accreditation affects quality of care and reimbursement can help you make a decision that leads to peace of mind and a caring environment for yourself or your loved one.
Find an accredited home healthcare provider near you, click here.
For Home Healthcare Providers looking for guidance on the initial accreditation process or needing help with accreditation renewal, please contact our partners, Certified Homecare Consulting.
