When AAHRPP released the first major revision to its accreditation standards in October, we already had an AccreditStation 3.0 beta system that was using a draft version of the revised standards.

Now, we’re pleased to announce that AccreditStation 3.0 is available to institutions that plan to submit their application following AAHRPP’s Final Revised Accreditation Standards!

Accreditation applications submitted after March 1, 2010, must comply with these revised standards.

Ask yourself:

• Did you plan to complete your application under the current accreditation standards, only to discover that you may be unable to meet the February 28, 2010, submission deadline?
• Have you decided to revise your application to meet the revised standards, even though you could meet the February deadline?
• Were you planning to use AccreditStation to help you assemble your application for submission in 2010, but weren’t sure if it would include AAHRPP’s revised standards?

If you answered “Yes” to one or more of these questions, contact us today to learn how AccreditStation 3.0 can help you with your AAHRPP application project.

We’ve got a great new tool available to help you see how AccreditStation can help you complete your self-assessment process, get your documents organized, and prepare your AAHRPP accreditation application submissions!

Our 5-minute demo takes you on a tour through the most popular AccreditStation features:

• Collaborating with team members.
• Uploading PDF documents and adding descriptive information about each document.
• Linking documents to AAHRPP Accreditation standards and elements.
• One-click assembly of all your application package drafts and submissions.

Running a successful accreditation project takes skill, energy, and resources… but getting your project to fail is easy, if you follow this advice:

Overload your staff. Assign the primary responsibility for the project to your IRB Chair or Administrator, without providing any additional staff resources to support him/her.  Choose the busiest people in your organization to serve on your project team, especially if they travel a lot!  Keep expectations for regular job responsibilities the same, while assuring your staff that heads will roll if accreditation is not achieved in the reasonable 3-month timeline established.

Disregard skills and strengths.  Be sure the person in charge of project communication is anti-social, and assign document revision responsibility to the people who procrastinate the most.  It’s also helpful to make sure there is nobody with project management experience on your team, since it won’t be necessary to be organized or pay attention to silly things like budget, timeline, action items, roles & responsibilities, tracking changes, etc.

Procrastinate.  It’s important to wait until the last minute to convert your documents to PDF and assemble the final package. Everyone loves the excitement of figuring out how to solve technical problems at 3am on the day before a deadline!  For an added thrill, make sure you’re out of toner for your printer so that you can hunt for a 24-hour office supply store too!

Decentralize your documents.  To make sure everything is prevented from being backed up regularly, it’s important to store your policy documents on several computers.  It’s helpful if these computers are over 5 years old, and are regularly brought home and stored on the kitchen table next to pitchers of water or other liquids.  When your data is lost, you’ll be able to reconstruct everything with a clean slate, instead of worrying about restoring from a remote server.

Underestimate the usefulness of technology.  Be sure you have no budget for information technology – computers and software are overrated for improving efficiency, working collaboratively, or automating repetitive tasks.  Why invest a modest amount of money in time- and energy-saving technology when you could WASTE BOATLOADS doing it inefficiently?!?  You can always have your VP of Research help do document conversion and application assembly in the eleventh hour – it’s an excellent use of his or her time.

Attending the OHRP Conference in Ann Arbor last week, about half of the people stopping by our AccreditStation booth seemed to be unaware of AAHRPP accreditation.

The few people who had heard of AAHRPP seemed reluctant to embark on the journey toward accreditation because they are already overburdened with responsibilities and aren’t clear on the benefits of participating in the process.

Instead of talking about AccreditStation, we ended up providing basic information to people about accreditation, encouraging them to visit the AAHRPP website, attend conferences, and join the AAHRPP Accreditation Community on LinkedIn to educate themselves.

Our experience at this event is not atypical – as we work with our clients, we generally spend more time educating people about the process, referring them to appropriate resources, etc. than we do providing technical support!

So here’s the discussion: AAHRPP accreditation is so important to the quality of HRP programs – what else can AAHRPP be doing to spread their message? Since I’m guessing AAHRPP doesn’t have an unlimited marketing budget – How can people help advocate, educate, and get the word out? Or is this just the nature of trying to convince people to do something that is “good for them” but is not mandatory?

We’re back from the 5th Annual AAHRPP Conference in Los Angeles, and we’re excited about all of the great connections we made again this year.  We heard over and over again that people are ready to make their accreditation process less painful by sharing lessons learned.  People are tired of feeling isolated, and want to communicate with their peers to share strategies for executing a successful accreditation project.

The best laid plans…

We know how easily life can get in the way of good intentions!  You return from the conference with a pile of business cards and every intention of following up with your new friends, but those business cards can quickly become buried under mountains of other work.  Before that happens this year, take action and establish new habits to keep yourself in the loop with minimum effort.

Social Networking Spotlight: LinkedIn

The great news is that there are a ton of social networking tools out there to help you stay connected!  There are a lot of services available, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so we’re just going to concentrate on one of them for now:  

LinkedIn.  Our favorite site for making professional connections is LinkedIn – it’s easy to use, and we’re already set up to create a network of people who share our passion for making accreditation less painful by sharing lessons learned.

• Step 1: If you don’t already have one, create a professional profile on LinkedIn.
• Step 2: Join the AAHRPP Accreditation Community Group
• Step 3: Invite your colleagues to join LinkedIn or tell them about the group.
• Step 4: Participate!  Start a discussion or add a news article of interest to the group.

Perform group reviews with a projector. Consider meeting in the same room and using a projector to display the document while one person makes changes, instead of printing copies for everyone. 

Use electronic annotation tools.  Instead of revising printed documents, use the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word.  Or convert your documents to PDF and annotate with Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple Preview. 

Print double-sided.  If you must print a draft document, print it double-sided.  Ask your IT staff to show you how - they love to feel useful! 

Use recycled materials.  Always use paper with recycled content wherever possible.  Look for paper or corn- based report covers and binders to organize yourself.

The word is out!  AccreditStation® is revolutionizing the way people manage an AAHRPP® accreditation application project. 

Last year we doubled our number of clients for the fourth year in a row – proving that more and more people are ready to concentrate on the quality of their application materials instead of wallowing in piles of paper!

Our clients tell us that they’re choosing AccreditStation in order to maximize the efficiency of their accreditation processes. By conserving staff resources, eliminating paper waste, and reducing mistakes they’re stretching their project dollars further – an essential move in times of budget tightening!

Visit our website to read testimonials from our happy clients, to view our demonstration videos, and to check out this month’s special sign-up offer!

Most accreditation projects stall because the other job responsibilities of team members get in the way. This is especially true if the project manager is also trying to run the IRB or compliance office. It’s hard to pay attention to the big picture projects when day-to-day crisis management tasks occupy all of your energy.

• If you can dedicate a full time person to be in charge of the process, do it!
• If you can’t dedicate someone on your staff to manage the project, hire a consultant! Having an outside voice of authority is usually a motivating factor, and experienced consultants can help you with everything from providing templates to content expertise to project management. If you don’t know where to find a consultant, contact us – we know several seasoned veterans (not on our payroll) who’d be happy to hold your hand.

Three years ago, you would have found the clients of Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, President of HRP Associates, Inc., burning the midnight oil as they tried to organize and assemble all of the documents for their AAHRPP® accreditation application.  Surrounded by piles of paper and wrestling with Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, they would spend precious hours renumbering pages, revising element indexes, and aggregating PDF files.  

But today, they’re able to accomplish all of these tasks in a fraction of the time using AccreditStation.  Collaborating remotely with clients through the AccreditStation tool, Dr. Cohen is able to help more institutions get accredited in less time – concentrating effort on the content and quality of the accreditation materials, instead of on the technical complications of organizing and assembling an application package.

Applying his 30 years of experience to the improvement of human research protection (HRP) policies and practices, Dr. Cohen has helped 9 institutions achieve AAHRPP accreditation with another 10 in the process of applying, establishing himself as an “Accreditation Guru” in the process.  “The most satisfying part of my job is passing on the lessons learned from my previous accreditation projects,” states Dr. Cohen, “If I can prevent people from reinventing the wheel, they can get accredited more quickly, improve the quality of their HRP program, and get back to the important work of protecting human subjects.”

As an AccreditStation Affiliate since 2007, HRP Associates, Inc. has been certified as an authorized provider of application support, and can offer special AccreditStation rates to its clients.  Along with its network of experts, HRPA has the critically important expertise to assist institutions with a wide range of activities designed to ensure that their human research protections programs are ethically sound and legally compliant.

There’s more to an accreditation budget than paying the application fee.  

Consider these other factors when you establish your project budget:

• Figure out the hourly rate of all staff members involved in the process (salary + benefits, divided by the number of hours per year that they work – typically 2000)
• Figure out the average number of hours per week each person will be able to dedicate to the project
• Now that you have the weekly cost of the project, multiply that by the number of weeks in your project timeline.
• Be sure to add in technology costs, application fees, consultant fees, conferences, travel, etc.
• Take a deep breath.
• Now make sure everyone is aware of the budget and the impact delays will have on the bottom line.

Knowing the real cost will help with decision making, and calculating return on investment (ROI) when considering options such as consultants or technology purchases to speed up the process.