‘Accreditation Stars’ light up the North Shore
Taking care of their clients is what they do every day, but staff at the North Shore’s Central Community Health (Home Support/Home Care), Health Connections Clinic and West Van’s CHC Chronic Disease Management were singled out for their stellar work during Accreditation Canada site visits this past September.
Serena Bertoli-Haley, Accreditation & Patient/Client Satisfaction Leader, presented each of the three sites with an “Accreditation Stars” certificate of appreciation on Tuesday to acknowledge and thank the staff for their hard work as they prepared for and hosted the surveyor visits from Accreditation Canada in September.
“As this was our first VCH-wide, full-continuum, full-geography accreditation site visit, these sites and teams were part of the sample that welcomed our surveyors and represented all of VCH,” Serena explained.
“They worked very hard to ensure that their day-to-day practices exemplified the standards of excellence set out by Accreditation Canada.”“While these are not the official Accreditation Canada certificates, which we will receive in the next few weeks, we wanted a way to say ‘thank you’ for all the amazing work and dedication that these teams displayed in preparing for and hosting the site visit,” says Serena. “They truly are accreditation stars.”
VCH met 94% of the 4,008 required standards of quality and care, with more than 40 sites surveyed. The certificates of appreciation are being presented to all VCH sites that hosted accreditation tracers during their site visit, where surveyors visited, talked to staff and clients, and observed care. At Coastal CoC, this includes acute, residential care, home health and community health services across the North Shore, Sea to Sky, Sunshine Coast, Powell River, and Central Coast.
Team pride
Roy Laube, Manager, Home & Community Care/Palliative Program, was equally effusive in his praise for the teams.
“The Community Leadership Team and I are extremely proud of both the frontline Home & Community Care Team and the Home Support Team who really stepped up to the plate and showcased to the surveyor the incredible work that they do on a daily basis,” says Roy. “The effort and pride that was evident in preparing for the surveyor’s visit as well as the candidness in describing our North Shore program and services to the surveyor throughout the day was awesome to witness.”
Official Accreditation Canada certificates will become available in January, and will be distributed to all VCH sites, including those not sampled during the site visit, in the new year, to replace the existing ones that are currently displayed in many of our public spaces for clients and visitors to see.
Next steps
As part of continuing its quality journey, VCH also has some areas of work in progress that will continue to be addressed in the months to come. Some of this work in progress will be reported as a formal status update to Accreditation Canada in February 2017, and then again in February 2018, as a condition for maintaining our accreditation standing. Our next VCH-wide accreditation site visit will be in the Fall of 2019 or 2020.