The Path to Accreditation
Accreditation involves being measured against over 900 standards of veterinary care across 18 categories. Fifty are mandatory, and then a certain number of additional points must be accumulated across the 18 categories.
Here’s how the process works:
- A practice calls the accreditation team at 800-252-2242 or emails them at practice.accreditation@aaha.org.
- The practice spends three months corresponding with AAHA’s accreditation team in preparation for evaluation day.
- On evaluation day, a consultant visits and conducts the accreditation evaluation on-site.
- The AAHA Practice Consultant will make another on-site visit two years after the initial visit.
Being accredited by AAHA doesn’t mean that a veterinary practice is accredited for all time. Instead, accreditation is a continuing process. Accredited practices are re-evaluated every three years. That way, AAHA can continuously guide animal hospitals through the changes in veterinary practice and technology to ensure they can deliver state-of-the-art services.
Standards and Guidelines
AAHA has over 900 standards for accreditation of care. Those standards range from pain management and anesthesia, to medical records and surgery. The standards are the backbone of this organizations and are closely adhered to by over 3,700 practices.
Each standard is exhaustively researched and documented by a committee of experts in the field. The level of detail comes close to being granular, with specifications for what drugs a veterinary hospital must stock at all times, how different rooms in the facility are to be cleaned and disinfected, how clients are to be communicated with, how the practice should be run in an ecologically sound manner, what purpose-dedicated rooms the facility must have, and so on.
To learn more about AAHA Accreditation please visit the link below…
https://www.consumersadvocate.org/features/aaha-the-league-of-champions