The Community Health Accreditation Program. Its strategic meaning to the home care industry

For many reasons, the Community Health Accreditation Program represents the home care industry's best strategic choice as a mechanism to assure and promote the quality as well as the growth of the health care industry. First and foremost, CHAP is a program with a rich tradition and commitment to community health and home care. With a quarter of a century of experience, CHAP knows well that the philosophy o providing care in the home, the methods, and the practitioners who provide care in the home are of a different nature from those who provide in-patient care. If we fail in our growth phase to protect and maintain the uniqueness of home care, we will have lost our greatest asset. Fundamentally CHAP, as a voluntary accreditation process, is built on a firm foundation of commitment to quality by the industry itself and includes a genuine desire to integrate quality improvement into each and every aspect and business function of the services provided. As a voluntary accrediting body. CHAP seeks to become a partner that provides the information and supports the home care industry's quest for quality. CHAP's aim is to provide what the home care industry needs most--experts in key aspects of management--to assist agencies in achieving superior performance. Quality must begin at the top, and it must be inspired and developed within the industry itself. Staff regulatory approaches will not achieve quality; in fact recent studies indicate that regulation may have quite the opposite effect. There is evidence to suggest that patient care is worse in highly regulated states.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)