AAHA Accredited

What does AAHA accreditation mean?

It means Frontier holds itself to a higher standard, and that your pet is receiving care at a hospital that has passed the highest standards in veterinary care.
Not all animal hospitals are accredited. Nearly 60% of pet owners think their pet’s veterinary hospital is accredited when it is not. In fact, only about 3,600 (12-15%) animal hospitals in the United States and Canada are accredited. Unlike human hospitals, not all animal hospitals are required to be accredited.*

*source aaha.org

Learn more about AAHA accreditation here.

The American Animal Hospital Association has been supporting veterinary practitioners since 1933 by providing them with the resources needed to successfully meet the public’s needs with regard to small animal veterinary medicine. AAHA provides DVMs (Doctors of Veterinary Medicine) with medical and professional standards, staff training and resources, client care education, and small business information on topics specific to veterinary medicine. All of this information is invaluable to veterinary practice owners as business management training is not offered in veterinary school.
As members of AAHA prior to our accreditation, we were able to access many of those same resources. Many veterinary practices, however, choose to take their membership to the next level and become accredited hospitals. In late 2011, I made Frontier’s AAHA accreditation a goal for 2012. To reach this goal, there were almost 900 different standards that needed to be met. Due to the progressive nature of our practice, we were fortunate that many of these standards were already a part of our operations and organizational standards here at Frontier. However, there were about sixty areas that the team and I adopted and developed for the accreditation and inspection process.

Even though we were well-prepared, I must admit the weeks leading up to our inspection were nail-biters! Only fifteen percent of all veterinary practices are AAHA accredited and we really wanted to join that special group. Nine hundred standards to pass – yikes! But when the accreditation day finally arrived, we passed with flying colors!