CCH Receives ACR Accreditation

The American College of Radiology has awarded accreditation to Conejos County Hospital, an exceptional feat for CCH.  

What does it mean to be accredited?  According to ACR, “The ACR awards accreditation to facilities for the achievement of high practice standards after a peer-review evaluation of its practice. Image quality and procedure evaluations are conducted by board-certified radiologists and medical physicists who are experts in the field.”

“CCH was very proactive in pursuing this accreditation,” said Konnie Martin, CEO of SLV Health.  “This is a rigorous, voluntary process that their employees chose to take on, and we congratulate them in reaching accreditation status.”

The effort to receive accreditation from the ACR came out of some insurance companies’ decisions to not pay for scans done on non-accredited machines. Not wanting their patients to be caught in the bind that this situation potentially presented, three CCH employees voluntarily began the process to become accredited and push for higher quality for their patients.

Those employees, Ann Shawcroft, Leanna McCarroll, and LaNae Holman undertook the process of proving that CCH’s machine produces good diagnostic images and that as technologists, they were knowledgeable and capable of producing good exams. 

The accreditation is valid for the next three years and then CCH will go through the same process once again, reinforcing the need for best practices in the time being.

“Receiving accreditation was a huge step in the right direction for our team,” said Kelly Gallegos, Chief Administrator at CCH.  “Now that we know we will be re-evaluated every three years, it pushes us to use best practices everyday with every patient as we strive to bring them the best.”

Pictured: Ann Shawcroft (left), Leanna McCarroll (center), and LaNae Holman (right) were the team in charge of getting CCH to ACR Accreditation status.