Beyond the Drip: What Infusion and Pharmacy Providers Need to Know About ACHC Accreditation

Jon Love (0:03)

Hi, everybody, I'm Jon Love, and I want to welcome you to Beyond the Drip. We're super excited as this launches our Season 3 I can't believe we have Season 3 already, after just launching this a couple of years ago.

Episode 18, as always, we are sponsored by ProChant. And so just a quick understanding of who ProChant is. ProChant is the country's largest and most expertise when it comes to revenue cycle management, in both DME as well as Infusion. And so we are very thankful for ProChant and the way they help us put on Beyond the Drip. Today, episode 18, we have a super interesting and unique guest appearances today. We have two folks from ACHC. So ACHC, Accreditation Commission for Health Care.

I think my first understanding when I came into the industry really early 2010-ish is I had no understanding whatsoever about what accreditation was, right? And so super excited to welcome them in today with us. We have a couple of folks from ACHC. We have Brandi Allen with us and Tammy Blady. Hey, guys, how are you? Good, how are you?

Paula Roth (1:04)

Thanks for having us.

Jon Love (1:06)

Thanks for being here with us. You know, I also want to go ahead and announce our co-hosts that are here. And so Paula Roth, EVP of Revenue Cycle Management for ProChain is here. Hey, Paula, how are you?

Paula Roth (1:17)

I'm great, Jon. Hi, everybody.

Jon Love (1:19)

Hi. Paula, I do just want to say three weeks ago we were in Vegas and you look rested now and you didn't in Vegas.

Paula Roth (1:24)

Thanks.

Jon Love (1:25)

So we just came back from National Infusion Center. I actually saw you, Brian, also Brian O'Sullivan, founder of O'Sullivan Group. How are you?

Brian O'Sullivan (1:33)

Doing great. I am equally surprised by this season three.

What a long run. And I think that's a lot about our great guests. People tune in.

Jon Love (1:43)

Yeah, well, they're probably not tuning in for us, you're right. So I agree. I am really excited to be able to, you know, one of the things if you're new to Beyond the Drip, namely Beyond the Drip because so much goes into our industry outside of just medicine dripping into banks, right? There's so much. And this uniqueness around accreditation has always been a mystery for many people. I know it's a mystery because, you know, I'll have, you know, private equity or venture capital call us. They're thinking about getting into it. And they're always like, you tell me about accreditation. You just don't understand accreditation. It was a mystery. So, so as we over here at MedEdge begin to partner and talk with our friends at ACAC and see the value of it, it became really clear, hey, we need some representation from accreditation ACAC here to talk about Infusion. So, Tammy and Brandy, if that's not what you were planning on, welcome. That's what you're going to do. So, deep into the pool here. You know, and so we're super excited to have you here.

Maybe just, just two minutes. Tammy, you're my first bot, so I'll go with you. A little bit about your history that you got here. Sure.

Tammy Blady (2:47)

I mean, I've been in the pharmacy industry for well over 30 years. Started out as a technician, went back to school, became a pharmacist, worked most of my career in closed-door pharmacies. So, hospital, long-term care, ambulatory infusion space, home infusion, obviously. And just kind of through my career, have always been in leadership and just trying to make sure that we have good patient care and, you know, good training for my employees and then leading up to accreditation. And then now I work for an accrediting organization and I love it.

Jon Love (3:16)

So, you're a corporate pharmacy liaison, and, you know, I'm always, titles are interesting, right? Because half the time somebody will tell you the title and you say, that's great. Now, tell me what that means. What does a corporate pharmacy liaison, I mean, you think about all the infusion pharmacies and the infusion clinics and the AICs that are listening to this in the future, what in the world does a corporate pharmacy liaison?

Tammy Blady (3:36)

It's a great question.

Basically, what I do is, actually Brandy and I both, but we basically oversee from, for ACHC, we oversee all of the corporate entity structures. So anybody who is an organization that has more than 25 PTAN numbers or more than 25 individual locations, we actually kind of meet quite often with their leadership and helping prepare them for accreditation, making sure they understand all the updated standards or any of the updated regulatory issues that are happening in accreditation. And then we kind of coordinate with them when they're ready for their either initial accreditation or their renewals. And we're working with them pretty closely to make sure it's a smooth, as much as possible, a smooth process to get them prepared and done for the accreditation with all of their locations. We do a lot more than just the survey. We help them prepare. We help them with any understanding for anything that they might have questions on and things like that. So it's really a lot of high point touching for those corporate locations.