Fair Practices Under CAAHEP: The Program Information You Must Publish — and How to Keep It Accurate

Most of the evidence you collect for CAAHEP stays inside the department — the self-study, the outcomes spreadsheets, the visit binder. The fair practices standard is different. It governs what prospective students and the public actually see about your program: the catalog, the program page on your website, the accreditation statement, the outcomes summary. And unlike a self-study draft, published information doesn't get a findings memo when it goes stale. A student, a parent, a visiting team member, or a state official finds it the moment it's wrong.

CAAHEP's fair practices requirements run through two layers: the Standards and Guidelines for your profession, and CAAHEP's own policies on publicizing accreditation status. This post walks through what you must publish, where it must live, and the routine that keeps every page accurate between site visits.

What “fair practices” means in a CAAHEP standard

In CAAHEP's standards, fair practices encompass the responsibilities an educational program owes to prospective and enrolling students — and the through-line is information. As the Committee on Accreditation for the EMS Professions (CoAEMSP) describes it, “Clear and accurate information allows students to make informed decisions regarding the policies and procedures, and outcomes performance of the program” [1].

The CAAHEP Standards have common elements with discipline-specific requirements, and CAAHEP's Standards and Guidelines page lists a separate document for each profession [2]. That means the standard number and the specific disclosure lists can vary by profession, so check the document for your own. What follows uses the Standards and Guidelines for the Emergency Medical Services Professions (the 2023 revision, effective January 1, 2024) as a concrete example, where fair practices is Standard V [3]; your profession's document should carry the equivalent requirements.

What must be made known to applicants and students

The EMS fair practices standard (V.A.1) opens with a rule that applies to every surface you control: “Announcements, catalogs, publications, advertising, and websites must accurately reflect the program offered” [3].

It then sets out what must be made known to all applicants and students [3]:

• The sponsor's institutional and programmatic accreditation status;
• Name and website address of CAAHEP;
• Admissions policies and practices;
• Technical standards;
• Occupational risks;
• Policies on advanced placement, transfer of credits, and credits for experiential learning;
• Number of credits required for completion of the program;
• Availability of articulation agreements for transfer of credits;
• Tuition/fees and other costs required to complete the program;
• Policies and processes for withdrawal and for refunds of tuition/fees; and
• Policies and process for assignment of clinical experiences.

A second list is made known to all students: the academic calendar; the student grievance procedure; the appeals process; the criteria for successful completion of each segment of the curriculum and for graduation; and the policies by which students may perform clinical work while enrolled [3].

The standard also covers lawful and non-discriminatory practices: student and faculty recruitment, student admission, and faculty employment practices must be non-discriminatory and in accord with federal and state statutes, rules, and regulations, and a faculty grievance procedure must be made known to all paid faculty [3].

Notice what this list is: a disclosure list, not a document list. The standard says “made known” — the catalog, the website, the admission packet, or any combination of them. The practical test is that an applicant can find, in one place, everything they need to make an informed decision about your program.

The outcomes summary you must post publicly

The same fair practices standard requires the sponsor to “maintain and make available to the public on its website a current and consistent summary of student/graduate achievement” — including the results of one or more of these program outcomes as established by the CoA: national or state credentialing examination(s), programmatic retention, and placement in full or part-time employment or volunteering in the profession or a related profession [3].

CAAHEP's own guidance matches: all accredited programs must maintain current summaries of student/graduate achievements, including required outcome assessments; check with your CoA to determine which program outcomes must be published; the information must be publicly accessible; and CAAHEP must be informed of the URL where the data can be found [4].

That last point is easy to miss: CAAHEP's public program listing carries a URL link to the web page where each program's outcomes are posted [5]. When you publish a new outcomes page — or move an existing one — report the URL to [email protected] [4][5]. The numbers on that page come from the outcomes assessment work you do all year; if you track retention, placement, and credentialing results continuously, the published summary is a byproduct rather than a scramble. See our post on tracking outcomes thresholds all year for the data side of this.

How to state your accreditation status — and use the logo

Promoting your accreditation is expected — but CAAHEP's policies (301–303, in the CAAHEP Policy and Procedures Manual) prescribe exactly how [4]:

• Public notification (Policy 301). CAAHEP maintains a directory of accredited programs on its website. If your program is on probation, CAAHEP still lists it as accredited — but discloses its probationary status in all reports and on the website [4].
• Accurate reporting (Policy 302). Always include the full name of CAAHEP and a link to the CAAHEP website when listing your program's accreditation status on your website. Current students and applicants must be informed in writing about your program's accreditation status, especially in cases of probation or withdrawal (both voluntary and involuntary) [4]. CAAHEP policy requires specific language. For an accredited program:

“The [name of program] is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs ( www.caahep.org ) upon the recommendation of [name of Committee on Accreditation].”

For a program on probation, the statement adds: “The program has been placed on Probationary Accreditation as of [date]” [4]. Some CoAs have additional language that programs must include in their published statement — check yours [4].

• Logo use (Policy 303). Only accredited programs may use the CAAHEP logo. It must be used in its entirety — no modifications other than size adjustments — and may be reproduced in black and white or darker shades of blue. Any publication that includes the logo must clearly indicate which programs are accredited by CAAHEP [4].

Why the exact wording matters: CAAHEP is a programmatic accreditor, not an institutional one, and its student FAQ is blunt about the consequence — “If a program isn't on the list, it isn't currently CAAHEP accredited” [6]. “We're accredited” is ambiguous; the required statement removes the ambiguity for the audience that matters most: prospective students.

What CAAHEP publishes about your program

Once accredited, your program's information is available on the CAAHEP website. In accordance with CAAHEP's recognizing body, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), CAAHEP provides public accessibility to information about the accreditation process, the results of the accreditation reviews, and student achievement [5].

An individual reviewing your program's record on the CAAHEP website will find the Program Director's name and contact information, the address of the program, its current accreditation status, the degree(s) and concentrations or tracks offered, and the most recent CAAHEP award letter — plus the URL link to your outcomes page [5].

That gives you two public records: yours (your website, catalog, and advertising) and CAAHEP's (the program listing). Both must be accurate — and when they disagree, the question is which one is wrong, and neither answer helps you in site visit week. CAAHEP's guidance is explicit that Program Directors should review the listed information for accuracy and notify CAAHEP of any changes [5].

How the site visit checks it

The self-study documents how the program meets each of the Standards, and the site visit provides “verification and amplification” of that information and documentation — through review of documentation and facilities, and meetings with students, graduates, faculty, administration, and advisory committee members [7].

For fair practices, the verification flows directly from the standard itself: if announcements, catalogs, publications, advertising, and websites must accurately reflect the program offered [3], the team's job is to check whether they do. And the student meetings are where stale pages surface — a student who tells the team that the website said something different from what they experienced is a finding waiting to be written.

The same standard ties published information to change management. In the EMS document, substantive changes — including a change in sponsorship, a change in location, the addition of a satellite or alternate location, and the addition of a distance learning program — must be reported to the CoA in a timely manner [3]. Each of those changes also changes what your public pages must say. Our post on substantive change reporting covers the reporting side.

A year-round routine for keeping it accurate

The disclosure requirements have no deadline because they never end. Coordinators who keep them clean run a small, recurring routine:

1. Assign an owner to each public surface. The program page, the catalog, the outcomes page, the accreditation statement — each has one person responsible for its accuracy.
2. Tie the review to outcomes publication. When new outcome numbers go up, re-verify every page that quotes them. The published outcomes summary, the program page, and the self-study data should never disagree.
3. Run a change-trigger checklist. Fee changes, credit or hour changes, new segments or curriculum changes, accreditation status changes, new satellite or alternate locations — each one is a trigger to update your public pages and, where relevant, to report a substantive change to your CoA.
4. Keep a copy of what's published. Archive each version of the key pages so you can show a visiting team exactly what a student saw at any point in time.
5. Verify the CAAHEP listing once a year. Director name and contact, address, status, award letter, outcomes URL — check them against your records and send corrections to [email protected] [5].

None of this is expensive. It's the difference between a fair practices review that takes an afternoon and one that becomes a conversation about your program's integrity.

References

1. Committee on Accreditation for the EMS Professions, “Fair Practices, CAAHEP Standard V (webinar),” CoAEMSP. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/fair-practices-caahep-standard-v/
2. CAAHEP, “Standards and Guidelines,” CAAHEP. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/standards-and-guidelines
3. CAAHEP, “Standards and Guidelines for the Accreditation of Educational Programs in the Emergency Medical Services Professions” (revised 2023, effective 1/1/2024), hosted by the Committee on Accreditation for the EMS Professions. [Online]. Available: https://coaemsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CAAHEP-Standards-amp-Guidelines-2023.pdf
4. CAAHEP, “Publicizing CAAHEP Accreditation and Use of the CAAHEP Logo,” CAAHEP. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/logo-use
5. CAAHEP, “Maintaining Program Data and Outcomes,” CAAHEP. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/maintaining-program-data
6. CAAHEP, “Student FAQs,” CAAHEP. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/students/students-faqa
7. CAAHEP, “Accreditation Process,” CAAHEP. [Online]. Available: https://www.caahep.org/program-directors/accreditation-process