Technical Directors Must Now Be Credentialed

from the May 2003 issue

At the beginning of this year, a new policy became effective requiring the Technical Director of each applicant laboratory to be credentialed in vascular testing. After thorough evaluation, the Board Of Directors deemed the following as acceptable credentials for vascular technologists:

• Registered Vascular Technologist (RVT)
• Registered Vascular Specialist (RVS)
• Registered Technologist (Vascular Sonography) RT (VS)

(Laboratories applying for accreditation in Extracranial and/or Intracranial Cerebrovascular testing with a physician serving as the Technical Director will meet this requirement if the physician has passed the American Society of Neuroimaging's Neurosonology examination.) Laboratories were notified of this impending policy through the Spring 2000 Newsletter and as a revision to the Standards, mailed in February 2000 to each laboratory possessing a copy of the Essentials and Standards. Currently accredited laboratories will be required to meet this requirement upon submission of their reaccreditation applications.

To ease facilitation of the implementation of this new requirement, the ICAVL Board of Directors recently instituted the following related policy:

If upon applying for ICAVL accreditation, the Technical Director of the applicant laboratory does not possess an appropriate credential in vascular testing, the laboratory will be granted accreditation for one year only, rather than receive a full three-year accreditation. Within 30 days of receiving notification of the one-year accreditation, the laboratory must submit a plan of action to the ICAVL, detailing how the Technical Director credentialing issue will be resolved over the coming year. Prior to the end of the one-year accreditation period, the laboratory must submit documentation to the ICAVL, verifying that a Technical Director possessing one of the acceptable credentials is employed by the laboratory. If verification is not submitted to the ICAVL prior to the end of the one-year period, the laboratory's accreditation will expire. Laboratories with expired accreditation due to a Technical Director credentialing deficiency may submit documentation meeting this requirement during the next two years and if acceptable, accreditation will be reinstated for the remainder of the original three-year accreditation period.

Effective January 2003, all Technical Directors must have obtained the appropriate credential in vascular testing:

ACCEPTABLE CREDENTIALS

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