The Community Health Accreditation Program. Its strategic meaning to the home care industry.
For many reasons, the Community Health Accreditation Program represents the home care industry's best strategic choice as a mechanism to assure and promote the quality as well as the growth of the health care industry. First and foremost, CHAP is a program with a rich tradition and commitment to community health and home care. With a quarter of a century of experience, CHAP knows well that the philosophy o providing care in the home, the methods, and the practitioners who provide care in the home are of a different nature from those who provide in-patient care. If we fail in our growth phase to protect and maintain the uniqueness of home care, we will have lost our greatest asset. Fundamentally CHAP, as a voluntary accreditation process, is built on a firm foundation of commitment to quality by the industry itself and includes a genuine desire to integrate quality improvement into each and every aspect and business function of the services provided. As a voluntary accrediting body. CHAP seeks to become a partner that provides the information and supports the home care industry's quest for quality. CHAP's aim is to provide what the home care industry needs most--experts in key aspects of management--to assist agencies in achieving superior performance. Quality must begin at the top, and it must be inspired and developed within the industry itself. Staff regulatory approaches will not achieve quality; in fact recent studies indicate that regulation may have quite the opposite effect. There is evidence to suggest that patient care is worse in highly regulated states.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
D000068:Accreditation; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D008330:Management Audit; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D014481:United States