We are an AAHA accredited hospital. AAHA is the American Animal Hospital Association. Why is accreditation important?
Everything I have done in my life has moved forward by comparing my personal and professional performance to benchmarks and standards. If you don’t measure yourself against something great, you will never push yourself enough. It starts when we are in school and get constant feedback on our progress. As we move away from school it is a time when this feedback comes less frequently. When I became a long distance runner my first benchmark was finishing a marathon. I accomplished this and moved on to more pertinent benchmarks. Qualifying for the Boston Marathon came next. After qualifying for and running Boston I had to search for something else to push me. I looked to people who run further in more beautiful and challenging places. This allowed me to become an avid trail runner and ultra-marathoner.
So, what pushes us as an animal hospital? AAHA is the only organization in North America that accredits animal hospitals. This accreditation is based on roughly 900 standards. These standards cover a variety of areas that affect the client, the pet and our staff. Let’s face it; we all think we do a good job. The question is how good are we? We find this out by inviting AAHA in every three years to do a thorough evaluation of our hospital and how we meet their standards. This is a process that allows us to undergo constant improvement. Roughly 14% of the animal hospitals in North America accept and meet this challenge. The nice thing is that these hospitals become an extended family which is AAHA. These hospitals share best practices and all learn from each other. As the standards are enhanced by leading experts in each area, we push ourselves further.
The rewarding part of AAHA accreditation for me is what it does for our entire staff. It gives them a sense of direction but more importantly, a sense of how good we are at what we do.