Happy New Year! As we head into 2016, preparations go into full swing for our next Accreditation Canada site visit, scheduled for September 18 to 23, 2016. Please share the information below with everyone on your team.

What’s new for Accreditation 2016?

This is our first VCH-wide accreditation site visit, the largest and most comprehensive to date. We need to ensure we can demonstrate that we have embedded the standards into day-to-day practice across our vast geography, so thinking regionally and acting locally will be the key to our success.

“We truly are all in it together this time, and we’ll have to show how we function as a diverse, yet connected and coordinated region” says Serena Bertoli-Haley, Accreditation & Patient Leader. “The site visit activities that staff will experience are very similar to our previous site visits for each CoC – surveyors will follow the journey of our patients and talk to staff about the kinds of things that they do every day to deliver excellent care.

“Accreditation 2016 is our chance to showcase that amazing work across all of VCH together,” she adds.

Six top priority ROPs underway

Based on self-assessment results and feedback from teams across VCH, we identified six Required Organizational Practices (ROPs) to target first for accreditation readiness across VCH.  Six regional working groups are now in place and are tasked with ensuring a consistent, regionally coordinated approach to addressing the six highest-priority Required Organizational Practices.  Each regional working group brings together regional and local content experts, along with Quality and Patient Safety, Professional Practice, Clinical Education, and project management support.  The six regional working groups focus on the following ROPs:

• Medication Reconciliation – led by Karin Trapnell
• Falls Prevention – led by Tanya Dunne
• Pressure Ulcer Prevention/Evidence Informed Skin & Wound Care – led by Jeanette Boily
• Infusion Pump Safety – led by Jacqueline Per
• Information Transfer at Transitions – led by Emily Rose
• Hand Hygiene – led by Sheila Browning

What are we doing so far?

See our profile on the VCH Infusion Pump Safety ROP Working Group and what they’re doing to ensure compliance to this Accreditation standard across VCH. Stay tuned for profiles of the other regional ROP working groups in the next issues of VCH News.

What about the other standards and ROPs?

We’re pleased to announce that we are hiring accreditation coordinator positions to better support preparation work across VCH, including the remaining 27 ROPs and 28 service-specific sets of standards.  Some of these accreditation coordinators will be familiar to you from their previous roles within VCH communities of care, and others are being recruited over the course of January.  Each program will be notified shortly of their dedicated accreditation support team member.

What’s next?

Between now and August, the accreditation coordinators will work with their designated clinical programs to develop regionally consistent and coordinated work plans, and ensure that these are well-connected and coordinated with the work of the regional ROP-focused working groups.  The accreditation coordinators will also provide ongoing project management and change management support to their designated programs to carry out the work plans and embed the standards into practice locally.

Starting in the spring, we will also be conducting hands-on practice sessions (known as “mock tracers”) for the on-site survey, and engaging with regional programs to select the sites and teams that will be visited in September to represent VCH.

It’s what we do every day

Thanks in advance for your support of Accreditation 2016. Accreditation is an ongoing quality journey, and our chance to let the great care that we provide at VCH shine; it’s what we do every day!

More information

Questions can be directed to the regional Accreditation Support Team through Serena Bertoli-Haley.