Areaka Jewell: Let's keep making accreditation easy, one step at a time. I would have to say that time-sensitive standards is one of the most talked about topics in accreditation circles. obvious reason is because it can cause the biggest problems, meaning ⁓ they can put agency out of compliance. But here's the deal. The very two words themselves, time-sensitive, They mean something important and I think most people get that. But when you get into the actual time sensitive references themselves, trust me, there are a lot of them. Obvious ones that are in your face and not so obvious, more subtle ones. But each can seem pretty straightforward, pretty simple on the face of it. But when they get misunderstood, agencies get jammed up. Now, let's... Take the most common time-sensitive standard, Most when they hear annual, they naturally think once per year, which is a completely normal assumption. But in accreditation, at least every accrediting body that I've looked into, that's not what annual ⁓ actually means. means... ⁓ once every 12 months. let's break that down for a minute. If something was completed in, say, February, it needs to be completed again by the following February. Not by December, not some time later in the year. It needs to be done within 12 months. And recently saw an agency run into this exact issue, which ⁓ made want to talk about it to hear today because this isn't really just a technicality. It's one of those details that can lead to agencies either receiving conditions or maybe even losing their accredited status altogether. Hi friends. I am Areaka Jewell welcome back to another episode of Accreditation Made Easy. Quick little sidebar. You might have noticed that the look of my podcast maybe visually is different. I thought it was time for an update, over the next weeks, you see a few things change here or there, but just stay tuned. Okay, today we're talking about time-sensitive standards and why understanding how they actually work is ⁓ critical, and I critical maintaining your agency's compliance. Now let's zoom out for a minute. Time-sensitive standards are exactly what they sound like. They require something to be done within a specific timeframe. And once that timeframe passes, there's no going back, there's no fixing it, there's no retro-activ-ness to it. you can really do is just correct it and move forward. but that moment in time, sorry, is gone. And that's what makes these standards so important. And now annual is one of the most common ones, but it's not the only one. You'll see other things like quarterly or monthly, maybe daily, within 30 days, within 90 days. Sometimes it's very specific, like deadlines such as January 31st. There's even some others that get kind of confusing, biennial versus biannual or semi-annual. And some of these are clearly defined. You'll find them in a or definition section if your standards manual has one. But then there's others that are embedded directly into the language of the standard, which kind of makes them easier to overlook. Things like prior to or within. they're actually buried in the standard itself. And that's where agencies can get into trouble. Because if you're not intentionally identifying and tracking these, maybe you're only relying on your memory, that's not a really great system. Actually, it's not a great system at all. So let's talk about how to actually manage these. First, knowing the definition, such as annual, is one thing. I highly recommend If your accreditation manual has a glossary or a definition section, go there. up all the time sensitive references that are actually in there and become. and get to know them, print them out, post them up, and also convey them to others in your agency. learning the definitions is only one part of the challenge. You gotta be able to stay on top of these time-sensitive requirements. Staying on top of all of these time-sensitive requirements is another story entirely. don't get me wrong, there is not one system. But I have seen a few methods that work really well. The most common one, by far, I would say, is agencies spreadsheets. And I like spreadsheets because they give you a really clear a glance view of everything. You can track the standard, you can track the requirement, maybe the last time it was completed, when it's due again, and I love the sort capabilities in spreadsheets. Now if you want to get fancy, you could even build in color coding so that things turn a different color, maybe red or yellow, if the data is coming up or if it's overdue. And trust me, if you don't know how to do this and you want to, am positive you could go to Google and find a how-to or even YouTube and watch a video on how to do it. if automating your spreadsheet turn different colors is something that interests you, then go check it out. Others rely heavily ⁓ calendars, maybe an Outlook or Gmail or whatever your agency uses. The thing about calendars is you can set reoccurring events then you can assign them to staff, build in reminders that get sent out. And the nice thing about creating the calendar events and assigning it to staff is not only does it show up on your calendar for overall tracking, it then shows up on their calendar for whoever you assigned it to. Another method, some agencies use PowerDMS tasks. You would create these inside your PowerDMS assessment. You create them to the specific standards. You can set due dates. You can even make them reoccurring. And reporting capabilities for tasks is amazing. absolutely love tasks for that. I will say though, tasks are helpful if you have an accreditation team. You can assign tasks to team members collectively. ⁓ So now it's just not sitting on your plate. It's actually showing up in someone else's PowerDMS inbox as well. And then there's email. Email is one of the most effective tools. It's right up there with spreadsheets. think together, two of them are rock ⁓ Especially when you email, you can personalize the text, maybe send a little reminder message, and you can even schedule emails to send in advance, plus you can attach an example of what the proof should look like. Although, truth be told, I attached previous year's proof that was provided, and I get back something totally different. I'm sure you've had this a time or two. And... The last method I want to mention actually the one that I use as my primary method. And will say it's definitely not the more common route and it takes some time on the front end to set up. But once it's in place, it will run itself like clockwork, I swear. Plain and simple. It boils down to this. If you have your proofs, and I mean proofs other than written directives and policies, if you have your proofs as PowerDMS documents, then ⁓ my God, the world is your oyster. All the things that are available to your policies, now if you have your policies in PowerDMS, those features are now available to your proofs. ⁓ And the feature that I use for my time-sensitive proofs, or actually I use it for all of my proofs, not just the time-sensitive one, is the automated document review. So for that, you set it up, you assign it to a workflow, meaning who is the document going to go to, meaning whose inbox is it gonna land in, and when, meaning how often does this review need to come up. So every single one of my proofs has a designated staff member responsible for it. So when the document shows up in their inbox for review and they know through training and my instruction that that means it's time to gather or produce the proof that's being reviewed. Now I could go into all the details of the process after that and how to get it done, but I'll leave you with this. If this automation sounds remotely interesting to you, just reach out to me and I will be more than happy to walk you through it. So there you have it, the most common and not so common ways to track time sensitive standards. We talked about spreadsheets, emails, calendars, PowerDMS tests and PowerDMS document reviews. But here's the important part of all this. Most successful accreditation programs do not rely on just one of these. They use a combination. Redundancy is what's gonna protect you. If something gets missed in one system, it's likely gonna get caught in another. but more than anything, The biggest difference that I see between agencies that stay on top of time-sensitive standards and those that do not is planning. And not just planning to meet the deadline, planning ahead, building in a buffer. Because let's be real, if you're aiming for the exact due date, you're already behind. you're putting things on your calendar on deadline date, you need a buffer because the reality is, Things happen, people go on leave, emails get missed, priorities shift. And if something is due in February, your internal deadline shouldn't be February. It should be January or even earlier, depending on what it is. Now let's talk real quick about what happens if something gets missed, because let's face it, it happens. Maybe there was a turnover, maybe someone got promoted or transferred or whatever. and then something falls through the cracks. maybe something didn't happen at all. Maybe it was just misunderstood like the annual that we talked about earlier. The key here is how you respond. First and foremost, address it immediately. If you miss doing something, do it Don't wait, don't say oops, we'll get it next year. Get it done as soon as possible. Second, Communicate, let your chain of command know. No one likes surprises, especially when it comes to compliance. And third, document it. If you need to self-report, I will tell you that self-reporting goes a long way in accreditation, because trying to hide it or ignore it is only gonna make things worse. And depending on the situation, your agency could receive conditions, which means they're gonna get reviewed more frequently than normal. And in more serious cases, it could literally impact accredited status. So this isn't just a nice to know topic. It is truly a need to know topic. is one of those areas that can truly, and I mean truly ⁓ make or break your program. so here's my encouragement. Take some time to review how you're currently tracking time-sensitive standards. Make sure you're working off actual definitions, not assumptions, or the way we've always done it. yourself, do I have a system and does that system work? Or I just relying on my own memory? Because the agencies that succeed in this area are the ones that plan ahead, stay organized, and build systems that support them. And at the end of the day, as simple as understanding that ⁓ means every 12 months can all the Now I'll put everything that we talked about today in a downloadable companion document and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. if you're not already signed up for my free helpful tips that I send out every week, just like this with the podcast, head over to www.accreditationacademy.net forward slash sign up and signed up. All right, friends, until next time.