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ACA's health & wellness standards: responding to change: risk management.

Article Excerpt
The word is out. ACA's new Accreditation Process Guide (2007) is making its way to the hands of camp professionals and standards visitors across the nation. Hand-in-hand with this goes a certain curiosity--what's changed and what's the same?--as well as questions about adaptation. The new standards will be implemented with next summer's accreditation visits; consequently, this column will focus on the Health & Wellness (HW) standards, especially the changes, and suggest strategies for addressing compliance.

Scope of Change

Of the twenty-five HW standards, only five vary from the former ones (ACA, 1998). This means many elements of a camp's health service, insofar as accreditation is concerned, remain unchanged. A familiar standard, for example, is HW-1. One of the three mandatory standards in this section, it still tiers the camp's provider credential based on response time to definitive care. The itemized list of health center policies and procedures is the same (HW-3), and the health exam for both campers and staff was retained (HW-6).

The number of HW standards requiring written elements--fourteen of them--increases by two with the 2007 revision. In addition, the specifics of written detail has changed in four standards. Three of these impact information traditionally captured on the health history form, a document some camps may have already produced for next summer. So yes, there are changes that need attention, now, to come into compliance with the revised HW standards.

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