Accreditation Maintenance Program

SMS, Inc. Accreditation Maintenance Program has been around for over twenty years and was the first such program in the industry designed specifically for helping organizations stay prepared for compliance in the Physical Environment throughout their survey cycles. By scheduling regular visits to assess compliance, provide regulatory updates, and assist clients with management of existing programs, as well as development of new ones. SMS, Inc. is able to keep clients at the highest level of readiness for scheduled or unannounced visits from regulatory agencies.

This program continues to be extremely effective in assuring maintenance of an organization’s regulatory compliance for the Physical Environment throughout the duration of their accreditation or other regulatory cycle. This helps ensure a minimum of adverse findings during their actual regulatory surveys and a more positive survey outcome for the client.

One of the core services that SMS, Inc. offers to its clients is the Accreditation Maintenance Program (AMP) for the Physical Environment (PE). The intention of the AMP program is to provide regularly scheduled on-site mock surveys in the areas of Environment of Care (EC), Emergency Management (EM) Life Safety Code (LS), to help ensure that your facility maintains true continuous survey readiness.

Depending on the size and complexity of the organization, a SMS, Inc. mock survey will consist of a 2 or 3 day initial audit to determine the readiness of the program and, dependent on the needs of the organization, may visit again an additional three times per year to evaluate your organization’s compliance and assist in development.

Visits from SMS, Inc. staff are structured to provide ongoing evaluation of EC, EM and LS, and are structured to provide ongoing evaluation for your organization’s PE programs, provide program development support, and address changes in standards and interpretations, as well as provide staff education relative to the Physical Environment.

Through these services, SMS, Inc. conducts periodic routine audits which enable our staff to monitor compliance, advise the facility of program inadequacies as well as informing clients regarding changes to standards and interpretations, and help ensure staff continuously prepare for survey at all times no matter when the actual survey takes place.

Over the years, results have proven that organizations using our Accreditation Maintenance Program have markedly fewer and less significant findings than those who start preparing for survey when they enter their “window for survey”.

Organizations that are AMP members additionally receive free access to our EC-Online service, Web-Site, the vast majority of our publications including:

  • The full PE Tab Set (hard copy mailed annually)
  • Tab builder (electronic)
  • The entire PE Manual (electronic version over 800 pages)
  • And much more