Even if you’ve mastered the first five components of survey preparation (understanding the specific requirements of the standard; understanding the required evidence of compliance; using support text to tell the story; submitting the right evidence; and submitting the right amount of evidence) you’re not done till you make it clear to the surveyors what portions of the evidence are relevant.
Sometimes a surveyor needs to review the entire document. This is often the case with policies and procedures on appeals used as evidence for the various elements of UM 8. Even so, highlighting and annotating are critically important. Since the surveyor needs to find evidence of compliance with each and every factor for each element—and since appeals P&Ps tend to be long and complicated—you should show the surveyor where evidence of compliance with each factor is addressed.
I believe the best all-around way to show surveyors what to read, and to what elements and factors the section relates, is with a combination of highlighting and text boxes.
The most intuitive way to do this is to highlight a section of text in a specific color then use the same color in an adjacent text box that indicates the specific element(s) and factor(s) addressed by the highlighted text.
For most documents, a single color works fine but if there are lots of small sections of relevant text and they tend to be close together (as is often the case for appeals P&Ps), using a series of colors, matching text highlighting color to text box color, makes it very easy for the surveyors to pick out the relevant portions.
Connecting arrows from a text box to a section of highlighted text can sometimes create problems if the arrow covers text that a surveyor needs to read. It can also make a document messy to read if there are lots of such references.
I dislike “in line” references that affect the formatting or pagination of the document. By in line references, I’m referring to insertion of text, usually in a contrasting color, right in the body of the document that indicates the standard, factor, and element being addressed by that section of text. Text boxes placed in the margins do not affect formatting or pagination.
A well-prepared ISS submission will dramatically improve everyone’s stress levels. The surveyors will be able to find what they need to give you credit and if they can’t find it, the part that’s missing is likely to be circumscribed and easy for you to resolve. The corollary is that your stress level will go down as well as you won’t be faced with needing to find and highlight multiple documents across multiple standards and create additional support text on 72 hours’ notice.