Absolutely perfect.
That’s how the North Carolina Institute for Public Health (NCIPH) rated the Health Division of the Guilford County Health and Human Services Department in its 2019 accreditation evaluation.
The official report isn’t out yet but the word is: Guilford County’s Health Division did as well as it possibly could have.
Guilford County Health Director Merle Green said she was extremely pleased with the results from the just wrapped up accreditation exam – something that happens once every four years and that entails a very thorough review of the county’s public health operations.
“We were graded on 147 activities that range from financial management to customer service and we scored perfectly,” Green said. “Our grade was 147 out of 147.”
She said the county’s Health Division had done well in past evaluations – but never this well.
“This is our first year making a perfect score on our accreditation,” she said.
According to Green, during the process, the county’s clinical services were analyzed closely in areas such as quality of care, range of care and patient information management.
“There were no demerits,” she said of those and all other categories.
She added that several programs – like the one that provides county residents assistance managing their medications and the “Smart Girls” teen pregnancy prevention program – helped the county demonstrate innovation in its delivery of health services.
According to Green, one key to acing the exam was that health staff started an intensive self-evaluation of its practices long before the outside evaluators came in.
Green also noted that the NCIPH gave the county’s pharmacy a “Best Practices” honor.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Alan Branson said this week that the rating was “awesome news.”
He said that, in his book, 147 out of 147 is an extremely impressive score no matter how you slice it.
