Speaker 1: Hello, everyone. My name is Aaron Abreu, Health Care Administrator for the United States Navy, and I also obtained my fellow status from the American College of Healthcare Executives. It was not an easy task to do, but I'm here to share tips that I've learned throughout the way, and I hope that you obtain the fellow status as well pretty soon. But before I dive in, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am not getting any financial benefits from any of the organization, the Department of Defense, the United States Navy, or the American College of Healthcare Executives. This is just me sharing my story because I want more individuals to have the same success that I did. This video will be broken up into two parts. In part one, we're going to talk about the requirements that you need before you can even take the Board of Governors exam. Now, that's the exam that you take in order to obtain the fellow status. I'm going to mention Board of Governors exam in terms of BOG. So if you hear the word BOG, I'm talking about the exam itself. Before you take BOG, there are several requirements that you need to have, and we're going to talk about that in part one. If you already met the requirements that I'm going to talk about in this video, and you're ready to take the BOG, then you are more than welcome to go over to part two of the video, where I walk you through what I did to study for the past five months. Yes, I study crazy, and I want to share with you my tips and maybe you're just like me where you need that preparation. So without further ado, what is FACHE or fellow status for the American College of Healthcare Executive? What does this mean? Obtaining this fellow status gives you three things. One, it gives you recognition that you are a leader amongst leaders in healthcare management. Two, you're also demonstrating your competency in all areas of healthcare management. And last but not least, you're also signifying your lifelong commitment to change and improvement. And all those three points are also listed in the ACHE website. First, you need to be a member of ACHE for at least one year. Now remember, you cannot use your student associate status towards your membership time frame, you either have to be an ACHE member, international associate or a faculty associate. Number two is your education, you need to have a master's degree and or above, you will need to show your diploma or transcript to prove that you've obtained that level of education. Number three is your experience, you need to have at least five years of healthcare management experience. How do you show this you're going to have to provide a copy of your resume, your job description, and an organizational chart. Number four, you need references, you need to have at least two references. One reference has to be from another fellow and it will be a structured interview. The second reference can come from another fellow or the senior person in your organization. This can all be done in a written format. Next requirement are continuing education credits or CEs. Your CEs need to be total of 36, 12 of which needs to be face-to-face. Now you're probably wondering how am I going to get this? ACHE has tons of resources for you to get those requirements. If you go to the website and you click on learning, there's tons of options within the website itself or you can also talk to your local chapter. For example, mine, I belong to healthcare administrators of Tidewater, and we've been hosting a lot of face-to-face credits for individuals to help them obtain their prerequisites for fellow or for recertification status. Last but not the least is your volunteer activity. Volunteer activity needs to be at least four, two of which needs to be healthcare related. The other two needs to be civil related. Now there's no specific time that you have to do volunteer. However, the four volunteers should be within the three years prior to submitting your application. Those are the requirements. Once you meet all the requirements, and you're probably wondering how do I track all of this? You do all of that through your ACHE login and you just click my ACHE and it gives you a progress bar every time you meet a certain requirements. Every time you upload a document, anytime you get an education credit, everything will be in the website. Super easy. After that, it's now time to submit an application for the exam. First, to submit the application, you will have to pay a $250 application fee. Once you submit that application fee, you will receive an email from ACHE saying that you've met all the requirements and you are now clear to take the BOG. Now for me, when I submitted, I think it took about three days when from the time of submission, from the time that I got the email saying you are now okay to take the BOG. During the time of this video, correct me if I'm wrong, I think ACHE has been doing this for the past few years. From March 1st to June 30th, if you submit your application during that time frame, your exam fee can be waived. Because yes, on top of the $250 for the application fee, you will also have to pay a $225 exam fee. How is the exam delivered? It is delivered through a company called PersonView. It is done through testing centers. It's all computerized, it's digital, it's in a quiet room, every center is different. Now, there is also an opportunity to take a paper test in person, and it happens at Congress. And here's the good part. It is 100% free. So if you are feeling brave, and you want to take one day out of your time during your time at Congress, I know a lot of my friends when we went to Congress this year, some of them took it and they passed. If you're one of those individuals, and you have that courage and that you're prepared, I highly encourage you to do that as well. But the difference is with computerized, you get the results right away. And if I'm not mistaken, with paper test, it does take a couple of weeks before you get the results. I personally prefer to find out the results right away. Hence, I opted for the computerized test. In closing, we've talked about what FACHE is, we talked about the different requirements that you need to have before you take the BOG. We talked about what happens next once you submit your application, and what's the format like for taking the exam. Now, let's go in depth with the actual preparation for the exam and the exam contents on the next video. See you there.