I had an administrative role in a hospital system early in my career that leveraged my first responder background and my knowledge of Life Safety and Building Officials and Code Administrators codes. I spent a lot of time in direct patient care as a firefighter/EMT in the emergency response realm. In my role at the hospital, I was a part of the ER mass casualty triage team, and I was tasked with safety and security compliance for the system. I was also tasked with our system-wide compliance with the applicable aspects of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations hospital accreditation standards. Later, when I went to work for the American Board for Certification in Orthotics, Prosthetics & Pedorthics (ABC), I fell in love with the professional provision of O&P care.
In my career, I had never really seen the immediate impact that appropriate O&P care has on the life and psyche of people in need of intervention. I was honored to work on the ABC Facility Accreditation program and to rewrite many of the old standards of care. I recognized very early that O&P care was underappreciated and misunderstood in both the healthcare and payer communities. For several years I was a member of the National Quality Forum, participating as a member of the Quality Measures Research Council. In that body, I was able to take part in discussions and decisions around the delivery of quality healthcare. We discussed how that is defined and how we can measure it.
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