Meet our ACRO Accreditation Team: Martha Mychkovsky

This month, we’re excited to introduce you to Martha Mychkovsky, MHSM, BSRT(T), one of our administrative surveyors for the ACRO Accreditation program. In addition to her involvement with accreditation, Martha is actively involved in the Sharing Excellence Among Leaders (ACRO SEAL) program. In the interview, Martha discusses her radiation therapy career, and her path to becoming an ACRO surveyor. We are grateful to Martha for her valuable insights into the accreditation process.

Q: Please share your professional information and what led you to choose a career in the radiation oncology field.
MM: My passion for helping people led me into radiation therapy. Once I started my clinical observations as a student, I knew this is where I needed to be. I wanted to learn everything I could, so I helped with various projects, jumped at leadership opportunities, and eventually moved onto the administration side.

Q: How did you become involved with the ACRO Accreditation program?
MM: The Rad Onc centers I work with were going through accreditation and I helped a great deal with the preparation for that. After having the reviews, the leadership team reached out to ask if I would be interested in becoming a surveyor. I have been an administrative surveyor ever since.

Q: What do you like the best about working as a surveyor?
MM: Hands down the education part of it. Sharing best practices or tips with centers that may be struggling with an improvement or staff engagement with a standard.

Q: Why do you think accreditation is important for practices?
MM: Accreditation promotes the highest quality treatments for our patients by providing standards and best practices for sites to aim for. It allows an independent review from an unbiased expert in the field to share areas for improvement and areas of excellence. Lastly it provides a comfort to your patients and staff that they in a center of excellence.

Q: What are some tips you would share with practices going through accreditation?
MM: Spend a lot of time going through the manual and evaluating your current practices in advance. Ask questions internally, including - is there a process in place for this metric/standard, and how can we show the reviewer that we are performing to standards? Do some internal observations or auditing of documentation to see what the reviewers will see. Dig into skills that are weaker or have inconsistent performance and work to improve long term for your patients, not just a fix for the accreditation reviews. Ask the reviewers if there are suggestions to improve various aspects of your clinical process or documentation.

Q: What do you think differentiates our program from ACR and APEx?
MM: ACRO has an established team for each practice; a physics surveyor, an administrative surveyor, and disease site physician chart reviewers so there is uniformity in the processes reviewed across all departments going through accreditation. ACRO is focused solely on our specialty of radiation oncology, all surveyors have rich knowledge in this field. The other accreditation groups are either not primarily focused on radiation oncology or do not have a set team of reviewers, therefore limiting the consistency and depth of review. ACRO is also the only accreditation organization that has gone through (ISO 9001) accreditation itself to ensure the accreditation program and process is strong.