Accreditation — the Basics

Understanding what it is and why it’s important to Emergency Management

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

For much of the last two years, I’ve been deeply enmeshed in assessing preparedness for a visit by or external accreditation agency. This has been an incredibly eye-opening experience, and one that has taught me a lot about understanding accreditation criteria, and the importance of accreditation to emergency management organizations.

There are a number of groups that provide accreditation to emergency management organizations — and the specific one you use is largely dependent on your subspecialty within emergency management. Healthcare has different accreditation organizations than municipal programs, who in turn have different organizations than nuclear programs, and so on…

Which specific program you use isn’t really important, because the principles and practices that you need to achieve accreditation will remain the same across all programs. The details of the standards may change, but the way you look at them and how you assess yourself against those standards will remain the same.

When it comes to meeting the standard for accreditation, you have to understand the standards, assess your current situation, and then create change. Without these three steps, you run the risk of of not getting your…