AccreditNet

Every once in a while I need to remind our clients that our ultimate audience in a URAC review -- the reviewer herself -- does not know what we know about our client's P&Ps, operations, and personnel.  Because we're human, we often cannot see all the assumptions we make about what the reviewer must know.  Often, these assumptions are misplaced and lead to a miscommunication between applicant and reviewer.

In this 5-minute video, I talk a bit about these blind spots and the need to overcome them by making a counter-assumption -- the reviewer knows nothing about your company.

So, you've finally hit "submit" on your URAC AccreditNet application. 

In the following 3 minute video, I explain why you shouldn't be worried that URAC wants more information from you, even after you've spent months assembling the perfect URAC application.

The newer modules (like PBM and DTM) have a new citation system that I've written about elsewhere.  The new system is in many ways an improvement, but has one problem I've identified so far: when you click "Remove Evidence" to delete a document, it may not delete it completely.

In the following 2-minute video, I talk about this issue, which I consider a glitch, and how to work around it when you want to remove a document.

Here's a glitch for URAC to fix and for applicants to know about until they do. 

We were just reviewing the "Program Specific Data" tab in AccreditNet (URAC's online application-submission application) for a client about to submit an application for reaccreditation.  This is more of a quality-check than anything, making sure everything's spelled right and that all the blanks are filled in. 

This client contracts with only one client, as we indicated in the "Group 9" part of this tab.  When we hit the magic button, "Save as Final", we were rejected, with the explanation that we had left mandatory areas blank.  The only areas left blank, though, were the spaces for the 2nd and 3rd largest clients.  Apparently AccreditNet is not that familiar with single-client applicants.

Our workaround?  Fill in the information about "Client #2" and "Client #3" with the same information as in the spaces for "Client #1."  

One of the most important things to understand about the desktop review process is that it is the applicant’s responsibility to direct the reviewer’s attention to the specific parts of the document that demonstrate that the applicant complies with each subsection of the standard.  Few things irritate a URAC reviewer more than to be given a large document intended to demonstrate compliance with a multi-subsection standard with no indication as to where in the document, specifically, the language is that demonstrates compliance.  An example of this might be a 100-page quality management program description used to support compliance with Core standards 29-33, with nothing in either the document or the “Citation” sections of AccreditNet that tells the reviewer where to look.  

How should an applicant help the reviewer find the language?  We recommend, quite strongly, that the applicant cite very specific paragraphs (or even sentences) within the submitted document for every subsection.  For example, your citations for your QM plan description for Core 31 might look like this:

Document: QM Program Description
Citation:
Core 31(a)/Page 3, Paragraph IV.A.1
Core 31(b)/P. 7, Par. VII.C.4
Core 31(c)/P. 53, Par. XXIV.B.4.(g)
Core 31(d)/P. 85, Par. XXXV.C.3.
Core 31(e)/P. 2, Par. III.B.3.

In addition to this type of citation, we also recommend that you highlight the specific paragraphs that you’ve indicated in these citations.  Most software programs you’ll be using to prepare your documents (probably Adobe, since URAC prefers PDF format) have a “highlighter” feature.

Reviewers like this, so do it!

Like all of us, URAC's accreditation reviewers often are pressed for time. They operate under quality and performance guidelines that help them plan how much time they need to set aside to perform your desktop review. Their lives can get pretty messed up if they encounter an application that is more difficult to navigate than the ordinary application. Therefore, you want to make their job easier so they can spend their limited time focusing on the important issues in your application, not basic navigational questions.

One of the big potential snags -- multi-section standards -- can be made much, much easier for the reviewer if you follow a couple of easy tips when you submit your application through AccreditNet:

• Point to specific language in the submitted documents. Particularly in cases in which the standard has several subsections, reviewers have a strong preference for being told where they can find the language to support subsection (a), where they can find the language for subsection (b), and so on. The word "all" can cause a reviewer's heart to sink.
• Reference all the subsections of a standard. A corollary to the first point is that, for multi-section standards, since you should generally not use "all", you should reference each subsection. Where you don't reference a particular subsection, it suggests that you do not have documentation to support that subsection. Not a good message to convey.

So, what would following this advice actually look like?  URAC's AccreditNet Instruction Booklet gives the following example:

Document, OrgABC section A.3 on page 1 for evidence supporting Core2c

While this is good, we think it may be a bit wordy.  Our URAC consultants recommend the following format for notations in the "Citations" section under each document:

Core 2(c)/P. 1, Sect. A.3.

Note that this concise format works only if you've got a numbered document.  It can get pretty cumbersome if your documents have no paragraph numbers (e.g., Core 2(c)/ P. 1 fourth bullet).  So, where possible, convert all your policies into a numbered outline format.  

There are so many multi-section standards in a typical module that just following these two tips can save your reviewer lots of time, even hours.

Think about how you feel about people whose consideration and good adminstrative skills save you hours of your time!  You definitely want that kind of good feelings coming your way from your URAC reviewer!