SNOW HILL – The Worcester County Health Department this month became one of just two departments in the state to earn national accreditation.
The Worcester County Health Department announced last week that along with the Frederick County Health Department, it achieved national accreditation through the Public Health Accreditation Board. There are just 60 health departments in the nation that have earned the honor.
“We’re very proud,” Worcester County Health Officer Debbie Goeller said.
Goeller said the health department embarked on the accreditation process more than a year ago in an effort to show county residents and leaders that the local health department followed best practices and used local resources effectively.
“We wanted to hold ourselves to the highest national standards,” Goeller said. “We wanted to demonstrate we were a high quality, high performing health department.”
Goeller said that because the health department already had the required strategic plan, community health improvement plan and public health needs assessment, it was able to begin the accreditation process with a letter of intent to the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB). After a training session with PHAB staff so that health department employees would know what the procedure entailed, the compilation of thousands of pages of documents began, Goeller said. A site review from the accreditation board was the final step.
Goeller said the health department’s staff of 250 played a huge role in the lengthy process.
“This is very much a team effort,” she said.
While proud the health department earned the honor, Goeller said the county wouldn’t have applied for it if there hadn’t been a chance of achieving it.
“We felt confident we have a good health department,” she said. “What you don’t know is exactly how well you’ll measure up to the standards. We were very pleased they recognized and were able to validate the good work we felt we’d been doing for some time.”
She said the accreditation was proof to county residents that the local health department was responsible fiscally and clinically and followed evidence-based practices.
“It’s good for the community to know they have a local public health agency that has demonstrated the capacity to assess physical issues and to develop best practice strategies.”
The PHAB accreditation program, which was created in 2011, is jointly supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The PHAB sets standards that the country’s more than 3,000 public health departments can use to improve service and performance quality.
Now that the Worcester County Health Department has achieved accreditation, it will submit annual reports to PHIB and be able to renew its certification every five years.