SEARHC - SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium

SEARHC earns AAAHC accreditation for Klawock, Haines

SEARHC Community Health Services has earned a three-year accreditation for two of its clinics from the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc. (AAAHC) Accreditation Committee.

The AAAHC accreditation is for the Alicia Roberts Medical Center in Klawock and for the Haines Health Center. In May, an AAAHC survey team visited the two clinics to see how they met a set of several hundred standards used to rate similar facilities across the nation. The two SEARHC clinics were found to be substantially compliant in all of the main AAAHC standards categories that applied to the two facilities.

"Achieving AAAHC accreditation is a very significant and tremendous milestone," says Mark Gorman, VP of Community Health Services (CHS). "It speaks to our commitment to the delivery of the highest quality health care services to the people we serve. It puts us in the league with nationally recognized urban clinics."

This was SEARHC's first attempt at earning AAAHC accreditation for any of its remote clinics, and the three-year accreditation is the highest level awarded by AAAHC. The accreditation process is optional and SEARHC has three of the eight AAAHC-accredited sites in Alaska (the Sitka CHS main office also is on the list of accredited facilities).

"For me, AAAHC accreditation offers tangible proof that the Alicia Roberts Medical Center can meet and beat national quality standards; that our clinic provides the same quality and standard of care that is offered by ambulatory care clinics anywhere in the United States," says Cindy Gamble, ARMC Clinic Administrator, who adds that she remembers 11 years ago when SEARHC only provided Community Health Aide-level care to Prince of Wales Island.

"An important aspect of AAAHC accreditation is continuous quality improvement," says Marcia Scott, Clinic Administrator for the Haines Health Center. "We will continue to monitor the care we provide, identify where we can do better and continue to make improvements."

Melody Price-Yonts, CHS Quality Insurance Coordinator, says the AAAHC reviewers were impressed by the Frontier Extended Stay Clinic (FESC) services currently offered in Klawock and soon to expand to Haines. She says the reviewers had many favorable comments regarding SEARHC's wellness and WISEWOMAN programs. She says one of SEARHC's future goals is accreditation for all of the CHS rural clinics.

For more information contact:

Mark Gorman, SEARHC VP of Community Health Services, (907) 966-8731