Wondering when you will get time to deal with all those new accreditation requirements?
You’ve been notified of new standards, guidelines, or regulations that need to be implemented. It’s time to get busy writing new procedures, right? Jumping in without enough thought and preparation leads to woolly procedures, written solely to meet requirements, that clutter up your document system. And they are not much fun to audit against or keep up-to-date either!
Approach new requirements documents with caution and your own quality system with curiosity. Just because a requirement is new doesn’t mean your lab is not already meeting it.
Follow these simple steps to keep your system on track without creating unnecessary procedures.
- Identify the new requirements – depending on who has issued them, this may be simple or very tedious.
- Do a GAP analysis of your current systems against the new requirements. Look for evidence of compliance. This where the curiosity comes in.
- Be analytical: Identify any gaps in processes and document them without deciding how to address them. Talk to NATA if necessary to find out the intent of any clauses that are confusing.
- Consult: Get together with your management team to agree if the gaps are really there and discuss conservative ways to address them.
- Plan: Make a plan and tackle it one step at a time.
When you review your own quality system, you can tend to see holes everywhere, and go too far writing new procedures to meet new requirements. O’Dwyer Accreditation can help you implement new accreditation requirements without getting tangled in unnecessary red tape.
Contact us now for a quote.