What is Accreditation Canada and the Qmentum International Process
Accreditation provides health services-related entities with an independent, third-party assessment of the organization using standards built upon best practices.
On August 4th, Grupo Rescue announced that their Punta Cana Medical Center the received the international accreditation certificate through the Qmentum International-Accreditation Canada program, becoming the first third-level hospital that obtains an international accreditation in the Dominican Republic, in recognition to excellence in the quality of care for users, with a high level of safety for patients, their collaborators, and the community.
In that sense, we cover basic information about Accreditation Canada and the Qmentum International Accreditation Process.
First, obtaining international accreditation is an ongoing process of assessing health and social services organizations against standards of excellence to identify what works and what needs improvement.
It involves:
- All members of your organization
- Members of the community
- Patients and families
- Community partners.
The main goal is to allow interest parties to understand how to make better use of resources, increase efficiency, enhance quality and safety, and reduce risk.
Qmentum International Accreditation process
Let’s take a look at the accreditation cycle, called Qmentum International Accreditation Process.
During the cycle, your organization is evaluated against best-in-class standards established by Accreditation Canada. Here are the five steps:
- Self-assessment
Early in your accreditation cycle, you will conduct a self-assessment questionnaire across your organization. The self-assessment is an opportunity to access a
user-friendly questionnaire to confirm your strengths and identify any improvements required to meet key standards.
- Measure, improve, prepare
Use tools such as questionnaires to assess your organization’s work-life culture, patient safety culture and governance functioning, helping to identify more
specific areas for improvement before your on-site survey.
- Simulated survey
This on-site assessment will prepare you for the accreditation survey by helping you become familiar with the methodologies used by Accreditation Canada’s surveyors.
- On-site survey
A team of peer-surveyors will visit your site to evaluate your organization’s clinical and administrative processes. The surveyors will talk with an observe patients,
families, staff, and leadership.
In addition to receiving an objective, third-party evaluation of your quality and safety, our peer-based team of accreditation surveyors offer valuable feedback and
recommendations based on best practices they have seen employed in other organizations across the world.
- Report, decision, and next steps
Following your on-site survey, you will receive detailed accreditation report and accreditation decision. If further action is required, we will conduct a
follow-up progress review at a later date to verify the evidence of actions taken and to remove any outstanding conditions from your accreditation decision.
What is Accreditation Canada?
According to their website, “Accreditation Canada is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to working with patients, policymakers and the public to improve the quality of health and social services for all.”
Accreditation Canada is headquartered in Ottawa and has satellite offices in Toronto, Montreal, Brussels (Belgium) and Quito (Ecuador).
The entity, composed of over 700 staff members, works with health and social services organizations in Canada and abroad to develop a sustainable culture of improvement that betters safety and efficiency, working to save and improve lives.
They cover:
- More than 1,000 health and social service organizations.
- 7,000 sites spread over five continents around the world accredited.
- They also have a team of more than 500 surveyors.
Accreditation Canada operates as an affiliate of Health Standards Organization (HSO). Leslee Thompson is the CEO of Accreditation Canada and HSO.
The non-profit entity focuses on developing standards, assessment programs, and other methodologies to enable health and social service providers around the world to upgrade on quality.
“Patients (and their families), practitioners, and policy-makers all play critical roles in achieving quality health services for all; people must be at the center of everything we do,” states HSO on their website.
In the following video published on Sax Institute, Leslee Thompson answers the following questions:
- What are the key features of accreditation and setting standards?
- What needs to change for healthcare workers to see value in accreditation?
- What advice would you give about how accreditation can be done well?
- What do you think can be done better or differently?
- Where do you see the key opportunities to drive health service change?