Staff Qualifications

This standard may be the shortest ever:

Staff meets qualifications as outlined in written job descriptions. (Primary)

It carries a weight of 3, and, like Core 4, has a straightforward documentation requirement at the AccreditNet phase of the process: submit job descriptions.  You may (and should) submit the same documents you submitted for Core 4.

The difference here with Core 4 is in the onsite review: for the staff members selected from the employee directory, the reviewer will compare the job descriptions' requirements to the résumés of the respective employees to make sure that they meet the requirements as outlined in the job descriptions.  The personnel file audit we recommend in our lengthier blog on the topic (click here) should include a check for that concurrence between job descriptions and résumés.

URAC's proposed revisions to Core 5 are subtle and significant.  The new version would read:

Staff meets qualifications as required in written job descriptions.
(Wt = M)

The most obviously significant change is in scoring -- what is now a standard weighted "3" (low on the URAC scoring scale), would become a mandatory standard.  This is something to which your Human Resources department should be alerted -- their oversights can now cost your organization a shot at accreditation.  This is new and worth noting.

In terms of content, the change proposed by URAC is the use of "required" instead of "outlined".  This takes a bit of the heat off of the HR folks.  Job descriptions are comprised not only of requirements for the job, but "preferred" characteristics, e.g., "graduate degree preferred" or "board certification preferred".  This proposed changed makes it clear that only those qualifications noted in the job description that are required by theh organization will be required to be met by this standard.  Most reviewers have read the old version of Core 5 this way all along, but this removes any lingering doubt.