The Flint Hills Community Health Center has received another grant, this time to study its readiness for voluntary accreditation, which could be on the horizon in the next couple of years.
Lougene Marsh, executive director of the health center, said nationally there is a move toward a voluntary accreditation program for state and local public health departments.
“It’s been under development for a while,” she said.
However, the program doesn’t anticipate taking applications for accreditation until 2011.
“There’s a large recognition that small health departments across the United States will be challenged to meet all the criteria that are part of the definition of a functional health department,” she said.
With that recognition, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is encouraging health departments to self-assess and identify deficiencies and how they can be improved.
The Lyon County Health Department is in the East Central Kansas Public Health Coalition, which includes an eight-county area. The area together applied for a grant through the National Association of County and City Officials and received it. Each center will receive $11,000 to assess the centers and evaluate their readiness for accreditation.
“First of all, each individual county needs to go through an assessment tool and come up with a numerical score,” Marsh said.
The operational definition is divided into 10 essential services:
F Monitor health status and understand health issues facing the community.
F Protect people from health problems and health hazards.
F Give people information they need to make healthy choices.
F Engage the community to identify and solve health problems.
F Develop public health policies and plans.
F Enforce public health laws and regulations.
F Help people receive health services.
F Maintain a competent public health workforce.
F Evaluate and improve programs.
F Contribute to and apply the evidence-base of public health.
After the centers are evaluated, each department will go over the scores and look at the situation regionwide. The centers together will then identify one or two performance goals to work on. All this will be reported back to NACCHO.
“We know we wouldn’t be able to start today and get accredited,” Marsh said of the importance of the study.