Want to become AAHA’s Accredited Practice of the Year? Here’s what the AAHA team is looking for.

There are new changes coming to how AAHA’s Accredited Practice of the Year (APOY) process works. Aimee Potter, an Accreditation Specialist with AAHA, and a member of the committee that worked on redesigning the process, shares the nomination shifts and criteria for identifying top-tier practices. This year’s APOY winner will be announced during our 2024 AAHA Con.

Q:
What are some of the changes people can expect with this new APOY process?

Aimee Potter:
In years past, practices would self-nominate. Practices knew about it through the website, through their practice consultants, and others at AAHA. There was a nomination form that went up on the website that they would fill it out, send it in, and then we as AAHA, have an internal committee that was made up of just the accreditation team.

We would then go through those applications, pick some finalists, and at that point, they would go to an external committee, which has historically been made up of past winners and others that have been involved in the process for quite a few years. Then they would pick the actual winner out of those finalists that we sent them.

The biggest change now is that practices will no longer nominate themselves. They’ll be nominated by their AAHA practice consultants, so those practice consultants are the ones that go into their practices and do the AAHA evaluations.

Practice consultants [are] able to nominate five of their practices, and so from that, the process is a little different because then the practices that have been nominated will be contacted saying, “hey, you’ve been nominated, would you like to move forward?” And from that point they will be sent a shorter application form where they’ll tell us a little bit about their practice, their structure, their culture.

Q:
Talk to me about some of the thoughts when you guys were having these conversations about why this process, why the transition to this process, and why it works?

Aimee Potter:
In the past few years, we have not had as many practices self-nominating. The numbers of applications coming in were not that great. We wanted to get more practices recognized because we have some great practices out there. So, we wanted to figure out what the change could be. How could we get more practices involved in this process? One of the ideas was having nominations by those of us in AAHA that are in the practices, that have seen the great work they’re doing. So, that’s kind of where that came from.

Q:
You all get to see all these practices across the country so when you all go to pick, what are those things that really stand out when making the decision to nominate?

Aimee Potter:
I think a lot of it has to do with just their practice team, how they interact with each other. That’s what the consultants see when they’re in their practices, right? During the evaluations, how well they follow AAHA standards is great and that’s what we want. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we accredited practices to make sure they’re practicing excellent medicine and following the standards. But I think just seeing how their practice team works together just as a team. Their culture is super important because we, in this industry especially, want to see cultures improving all the time.

I think those practices that are getting involved in their community with their clients and patients, and are really caring about not just day-to-day business, but caring about their community and their culture as a whole, I think plays a big part in it.