A national healthcare association reaccredited the University of Wisconsin’s University Health Services after the program proved to meet countrywide care standards.  

Executive Director of UHS, Dr. Sarah Van Orman, said the reaccreditation, which was granted to UHS by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care for the next three years, requires numerous standards in various health care-related categories to be met.

“Accreditation organizations set standards in key health care areas,” Van Orman said. “There are hundreds of these standards about how you should operate as a health organization.”

Van Orman added the main categories for healthcare standards listed in the handbook given to health care facilities by AAAHC include patient rights, governance of the facility, overall administration, quality of health care given, infection control and emergency procedures.

“We are judged and given accreditation if we do these things based on national standards,” Van Orman said.

Director of Clinical Services at UHS, Dr. Gerald Ryan, said AAAHC is an agency that gives accreditation after verifying that both the processes and the overall patient care of the health care facility are carried out in the best way possible.

According to a UW statement, UHS was one of the nation’s first university health programs to receive accreditation. UHS first received accreditation in 1984 and has been reaccreditated continuously since.

Ryan said the process to being reaccredited by an agency like AAAHC involves a few steps, starting with the submission of an application stating how the facility has met the required standards.

“One of the accreditors sent to the UHS site said, ‘I’d love to work in this organization,’ and for an accreditor to say that was a big deal,” Ryan said.

Ryan said after the application is submitted, AAAHC sends site visitors to the health care facility, where it looks at all of the records kept by the health care to determine if the standards are indeed being met. He added the site visitors then confirm with the agency whether or not the statements in the application were true.

Van Orman said UHS has multiple reasons for ensuring they are meeting the standards necessary to be reaccredited by AAAHC every few years.

“We think it is a public way to talk about the quality of the care we provide,” Van Orman said, adding the application process is also good for keeping UHS on track.
It keeps UHS constantly evaluating its practices to ensure it is providing the best health care possible, she added.

Ryan said there are some very positive outcomes and implications that come with being a health care facility accredited by an organization like AAAHC.

One of those outcomes, Ryan said, was that accreditation processes find areas in which a facility is not doing well and show them how to make these areas better.

Ryan added another positive outcome is that accreditation allows an outside, nationally-recognized organization to validate that the services being provided are good.

“If we are meeting national standards provided by a national organization, then students can be sure that the foundations of our health care institution are sound,” Ryan said.