Monday, March 3, 2014
SPRING HOUSE, Pa. (Feb. 25, 2014)—The Compliance Team, Inc. (TCT), the nation’s only certified woman-owned health care accreditation organization to hold Medicare deeming authority to accredit Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, Supplies (DMEPOS) providers is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2014, founder and president, Sandra C. Canally, RN and Steve Simmerman, vice president of operations announced recently at the firm’s Philadelphia headquarters. Sandy Canally, the principal author and architect of TCT’s trademark protected Exemplary Provider programs and their respective Safety-Honesty-Caring quality standards incorporated the firm in 1994 as a self-funded independent healthcare evaluation enterprise. “From the outset, I focused on accreditation simplification,” the former nurse oncologist* explained. “My intent was to make it easier for everyone within an organization to buy into the process by combining a readily recognizable quality branding message with a third-party validated accreditation tool.” Canally’s efforts led to many accreditation innovations including the development of the industry’s first sets of plain language service and product-line specific quality standards that are structured around an organization’s day-to-day patient care and business practices. She then coupled it all together by offering at no extra cost one-on-one expert implementation mentoring, access to numerous policy and documentation templates and a web portal for uploading patient satisfaction reports and peer-to-peer benchmarking. Simmerman, who has known Canally since the early 1990s, explained how it all began, “Sandy started by taking on DMEPOS accreditation consulting assignments. Then she landed managed care contracts that ranged in scope from physician network credentialing to developing Medicaid patient quality measures. Her spare time was spent at Philadelphia-area law libraries and book stores doing research, critical thinking and writing,” he observed. The first of The Compliance Team’s Exemplary Provider programs were formally launched in Fall 1998. Major managed care recognition started in March 1999 when North Carolina BC/ BS approved the firm’s DMEPOS program as an accreditation alternative to JCAHO, CHAP and ACHC accreditation; the only other DMEPOS accreditors at the time. Presently, the for-profit firm has accredited thousands of healthcare organizations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, and its programs are considered industry benchmarks for third-party validated clinical and non-medical (private duty) accreditation. In addition to all DMEPOS providers, the Compliance Team offers Exemplary Provider accreditation for: Rural Health Clinic; Critical Access Hospital; Retail Clinic; Physician Practice; Infusion/ Specialty/ LTC, DMEPOS and Retail Pharmacy; Sleep Care Management; Ocularist; Home Health/ Hospice; and Private Duty (non-medical) Agencies. For more information, visit thecomplianceteam.org.