URAC Core 23 -- Consumer Safety Mechanism

One of the most important of the URAC Core standards is Core 23:

The organization has a mechanism to respond on an urgent basis to situations that pose an immediate threat to the health and safety of consumers.

The first thing to know about this is that it is weighted "5", and therefore a mandatory standard. In other words, you mess up this standard and you cannot achieve full accreditation.

The second thing to know is that, even though the standard speaks of "a mechanism", the reality is that it requires a system of mechanisms dealing with the full array of urgent situations that are likely to confront the applicant. You can see this intent reflected in the Program Guide under the "Evidence for Desktop Review" section:

Policies and procedures regarding responses to consumer safety address suicide, domestic violence, accessing emergency services for members, addressing significant reportable events, quality of care concerns.

So, in the application, make sure to submit P&Ps that address the full array of likely issues.

However, the tricky part of passing this standard is not so much knowing what to submit with the application, but making sure your staff members know what the basic standards of care for each of these urgent situations is.

The upshot of this is that your staff training should include appropriate responses to urgent situations. The URAC reviewers will pose a series of hypotheticals to your staff members, and will listen carefully to their answers to detect the quality of your training.