Why hire an accreditation consultant?

As presented by Medea Valdez, Ph.D.

From her webinar, “Consultants and Accreditation Support”

Thank you for joining me today for a new blog series. I aim to educate you about what we consultants do and how institutions and programs can effectively work with us to support compliance with accreditation. 

I’m a full-time consultant with Massey & Associates Consulting Solutions. In that role, I get to work with a team of consultants led by Dr. Scott Massey. I work with dedicated faculty from programs around the country and have the opportunity to positively impact institutions, PA programs, educators, and PA education overall. I love what I do, which I hope you’ll be able to see from this newsletter series.

Before we begin, please note that I use the word “consultant” here, but this can also mean a consultant team, which is how our company operates. A consultant is a professional expert with experience and knowledge in a particular area who is hired for a particular project. They bring an external perspective.

A consultant helps you achieve your overall goal of accreditation by:

• Supporting your understanding of compliance

• Supporting your compliance with the standards

• Providing education about accreditation

• Guiding you to available resources

• Supporting the “team approach” to accreditation. 

We’ll touch on each of these points as we move forward.

What a consultant can do for you and your program

A consultant can do many things for your program, but please note that this list is by no means complete! Depending on your program’s current needs, consultants can offer far more.

1. Provide specialized advice on accreditation. Plus, a consultant’s advice is focused on your program. A consultant looks at compliance through the lens of your situation, mission, and structure.

2. Provide guidance. As we all know, there is a great deal of information to process regarding accreditation. A consultant can help the program synthesize that information and provide guidance about what direction to take or options to consider to be in compliance and how to demonstrate compliance. 

3. Provide mentorship. A consultant works with a program director and can also work with other faculty to provide advice, share experiences, provide insight into different situations, and help them develop their leadership skills. 

4. Make recommendations. A consultant makes recommendations based on what is revealed in their review of your program.

5. Offer examples and exemplars. Consultants may have examples and templates to share with the program that you can use as a starting point for your documents, policies, and procedures.

6. Propose solutions. Consultants analyze your situation from the outside. Sometimes, faculty or program directors come up against an obstacle they just can’t see a way through. A consultant helps take a step back, look at the “big picture,” and even engage in some brainstorming activities where you get to consider options at your institution, and can help and guide you to see which ones best enable you to be in compliance.

7. Help improve processes. A consultant can help you develop a process to monitor and review compliance.  

8. Mitigate risk and identify gaps. Consultants examine policies, documents, and the program’s website critically. They poke holes and find loopholes. They find issues and areas of concern, even for programs that have done things the same way for a long time without issue. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke” is a philosophy that often leaves programs out of compliance without realizing there has been an important change in the Standards.

Your program’s responsibilities

The program, not the consultant, is responsible for its actions and outcome. The program owns the accreditation project, including submitting the application, having the site visit, and demonstrating compliance with the Standards. 

Therefore, the program makes those final decisions. Consultants make recommendations and suggestions, but it is up to the institution and program to determine if these are the right solutions and then work on their implementation.

Also, the consultant does not have the last word on whether you are in compliance. They can make educated recommendations, but the final word belongs to the ARC-PA. When in doubt, the ARC should always be consulted.

In summary, the PA program ultimately owns the project, is responsible for compliance, and makes the decisions.

In the following newsletter…

Now that we’ve covered the basics on what consultants can do and their limitations, we’ll have much to elaborate on. Next week, we’ll continue exploring what a consultant can do for your program by discussing the “team approach mindset.” Is everyone in your institution and program fully “bought in” to their roles in compliance and accreditation? A consultant can help ensure it.

Thank you, and I’ll see you again next time.