Thinking of applying for your initial Interprofessional Joint Accreditation (Joint Accreditation)? If so, consider these best practices to ensure a successful result:

• The shift from an individual accreditation, such as Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to Joint Accreditation is not just a conceptual exercise. It takes 18 months of advance planning!
• Essentially, to successfully attain JA, you must operate as if you are already accredited by JA insomuch as you must understand and implement the JA Criteria for Accreditation and the Standards for Integrity and Independence in the educational activities you offer. This will enable you to demonstrate to JA a mastery of their requirements.
• Don’t rely on another organization with whom you may be partnering to demonstrate compliance because they may not be up to speed on the requirements. You need to understand them and master them.
• Develop your own JA Planning Guide. One builds this Guide based on the Planning Criteria (JA Criteria 4-10) and Standard 3 of the Standards for Integrity and Independence to be able to collect the correct information about planner and faculty financial relationships with ineligible companies, and then vet those disclosure forms to determine which reported relationships are relevant to your CE activity.
• Remember that planning JA activities does not take place in silos in which you inquire about needs from physicians, and then inquire about needs from nurses, etc. ALL planners must be on an even playing field and communicate with each other about their roles, functions, and impact on patient care.
• Remember that you must plan a minimum of 25% of your total educational activities by and for the healthcare team.
• Start immediately to add new evaluation questions that measure the impact on your healthcare team – both to measure improvements in Skills/Strategy (intent to change) and Performance (actual implementation in practice 2-4 months after the educational activity).
• Be aware that JA activities must be interactive so that your attendees learn with, from, and about each other. This is the essence of JA.
• Interested in JA Accreditation with Commendation? This also takes many months of advance planning to achieve compliance with the seven advanced commendation criteria you select to demonstrate. Be wide-eyed about what each commendation criteria requires, take an honest look to see if you are already compliant for each criterion or if you can be compliant. Create a Tracking Sheet to manage your commendation progress.

Have questions? Need answers? Feel free to reach out to Steve Passin from PassinAssociates at passin@passinassociates.com, or visit our website: www.PassinAssociates.com