About
You are hiring a person, not a firm.
Wagner Advisory Group, LLC is an independent consulting practice led by Aaron Wagner, an active CARF surveyor. Every engagement is delivered by the person you speak to on the discovery call.
Aaron Wagner
I have surveyed for CARF International for ten years. That is a decade of walking into other organizations’ surveys, reading their documentation the way a surveyor reads it, and deciding whether what is on the page actually demonstrates what the standard requires. This practice exists because most of what organizations get wrong is predictable from that side of the table, and fixable well before anyone shows up.
Day to day I am a senior operations executive at a large Cincinnati nonprofit, responsible for program operations, finance and capital planning, growth strategy, and board governance across adult day services, pediatric extended care, childcare, and workforce programs. I have written and rewritten the policies that get cited, and worked through an agency-wide policy binder line by line against CARF standards alongside Ohio DODD and Medicaid rules, HIPAA, OSHA, and childcare and pediatric licensing requirements. So I am not only reading your documentation the way a surveyor will. I have had to produce it myself, on a deadline, while running the programs.
I hold a bachelor’s degree and a Juris Doctor. The law degree earns its place here for one specific reason: accreditation standards, Medicaid rules, and licensing regulations are written in a language that rewards close reading, and a great deal of this work is establishing what a standard actually requires rather than what everyone assumes it requires.
On the surveyor role. I survey for CARF in a separate, individual capacity. I do not survey any organization this practice has advised, I do not speak for CARF, and I have no influence over accreditation decisions. Anyone who suggests otherwise is selling you something that does not exist.
How this practice works
- Engagements are limited so each client gets real attention
- Work is grounded in the current standards manual, not a general checklist
- Documents are drafted for your organization, not generically
- Fixed fees agreed before work begins, with no open-ended hourly billing
- Your file is reviewed by someone who conducts surveys, not someone who reads about them
The approach
Accreditation consulting has a tendency toward the abstract, full of frameworks, maturity models, and long reports that describe problems without solving them. This practice runs the other way. The work product is documents your organization can adopt, evidence a surveyor can follow, and staff who know what they will be asked.
That comes from a specific conviction: organizations do not fail surveys because they provide poor care. They fail because they cannot demonstrate, on paper and on demand, that they do what they say. Closing that gap is a documentation and preparation problem, and it is solvable.
What this practice will not do. Guarantee an accreditation outcome, write policies describing practices you do not actually follow, or hand you a report and disappear. Accreditation decisions rest solely with CARF International, and a policy that misrepresents your operations is a liability rather than an asset.