What makes your Veterinary Hospital awesome?
Is it the people, the staff, the customer service, the quality of medicine, or the availability? Many veterinary hospitals bring something of value to their clientele and patients. However, there are certain veterinary hospitals that even go above and beyond the standards.
Those veterinary hospitals are AAHA accredited!
What is AAHA?
AAHA is the American Animal Hospital Association. They have been around for 82 years, and they embody veterinary excellence in both the U.S. and Canada.
“We are the only organization in the United States and Canada that accredits companion animal hospitals based on standards that meet or exceed state and provincial regulations.”
AAHA’s goal is to improve the quality of veterinary medicine. Besides the current 900 standards that AAHA has in place, they are always reviewing and updating those practices so that they are on the forefront of veterinary excellence.
How do veterinary hospitals become accredited by AAHA?
Veterinary hospitals are ranked and evaluated based on 900 different veterinary standards. Additionally, to keep their accreditation, each hospital is reevaluated every 3 years.
Why do I love AAHA?
As someone who has worked for several different veterinary hospitals, I can say that standards and practice change significantly over time and from hospital to hospital. Depending on the state, many technicians and veterinarians are required to keep up with CE (continuing education). For individual state requirements, please refer to CE State requirements provided by Iams. These CE requirements are in place to make sure that veterinary professionals remain informed about new research, developments, and processes. The goal is to keep veterinary professionals educated and up to date on standards. AAHA takes this a step further by ensuring that the hospitals integrate the best new practices into their hospital.
Why aren’t all veterinarians accredited by AAHA?
That is a very good question.
The accreditation is voluntary, and can be a rigorous process. However, any hospital that is choosing to be accredited by AAHA is committing itself to meeting high-quality standards both now and in the future.
There are many great veterinary hospitals that are not currently accredited by AAHA, but I am encouraging you to ask your veterinarian if they have ever considered accreditation or if they will in the future. The more pet parents demand quality standards, the more likely we are to get them.
Is your veterinary hospital AAHA accredited?
You can use AAHA’s hospital locator to determine if your veterinary hospital is AAHA accredited.
Please keep in mind the following stats:
60% of pet parents think their veterinary hospital is accredited
Only 12-15% of veterinary hospitals choose to be accredited
Would you be alarmed to learn that your veterinary hospital is not accredited?
Kismet
June 11, 2015 at 7:08 pmBeing accredited isn’t everything. Even with human medicine, if the facility has problems, the news spreads. When things are good, news spreads. There’s a lot of politics in accreditation.
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Rachel
June 23, 2015 at 2:32 pmKismet, I agree, especially for human medicine. However, since vets are so independent, I think its nice to have to option to have a regulated vet, but you are right, there are no guarantees.
M. K. Clinton
June 12, 2015 at 11:12 amI love our vet that we found through AAHA. It was a marked difference in the way they do business and the way my old vet worked. I’m very pleased to have found out about them.
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Rachel
June 23, 2015 at 2:33 pmThank you so much for sharing Melissa!
The Island Cats
June 12, 2015 at 3:40 pmWe checked and our vet is not a AAHA accredited vet. But we like them anyways.
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Rachel
June 23, 2015 at 2:37 pmI do know some good vet hospitals in this area that are not accredited, but it might be something they want to look into for the future. Thank you for sharing!