Accreditation Where Credit is Due

 By Peter Mitchell

As part of its ongoing commitment to provide the highest standards of home health care and service, Acclaim Health is proud to announce it has been awarded accreditation through Accreditation Canada’s Qmentum Program.

Accreditation Canada is a not-for-profit organization that provides health care organizations an external peer review process to gauge and improve their client and patient services based on national standards of excellence. Its team of surveyors includes experienced and accredited health professionals, including physicians, nurses, health executives and administrators, occupational therapists, and social workers. The lengthy and comprehensive process covers every aspect of operations from governance to finance.

“It was quite gratifying,” says Angela Brewer, CEO of Acclaim. “They presented a very positive report back to us: the leadership is good; the board is community based and very engaged; we are very involved with client safety; and we have strong teamwork throughout the organization. What struck me is the fact they heard the same messages from me as they heard from the front-line staff. That tells me that our philosophy is rooted throughout the organization. That is extremely important.”

That philosophy is based on Acclaim’s core values of respect, participation, responsiveness and innovation –factors that were evident when the organization began the journey of accreditation as part of its continuing drive to seek out and provide the best, most innovative service available to its clients.

 “The whole focus of accreditation is the client,” says Johanne Carbonneau-Ellis, Acclaim’s Director of Quality Improvement. “Part of the primer involved surveyors coming to see the foundation of Acclaim Health. Did we have the foundation in place to move to the next phase? We had to survey our clients and ask questions about service delivery, their expectations and so on. Based on those results we were awarded the Accreditation Primer Award in December 2008.”

But the journey had only just begun. That success allowed Acclaim to embark on the Qmentum Accreditation Program, a Quality Performance Roadmap that focuses on a range of measures encompassing client safety, ethical decision-making, communication and training. For the next two years Acclaim completed extensive peer reviews and conducted numerous surveys relating to Home Care, Effective Organization, Governance and other standards designed to assess and improve services to clients, staff and community partners.

“They talk a lot about the interdisciplinary team,” Johanne says. “In an organization like Acclaim Health the interdisciplinary team is the client’s doctor and pharmacist, and the nurse or support worker. The team is almost like a remote team. It’s not like you’re working in a hospital where people are right there face-to-face discussing the case. There are a lot of obvious challenges to providing community health care and to have that interdisciplinary team.”

 The standards are very rigorous. Johanne says, “A major focus is communication, education and training. We already had a lot of education and training for our staff, but we really had to ramp it up. We introduced a client caregiver safety handbook to help our clients and families stay healthy and safe at home. It covers infection prevention, medication management, fall prevention, fire safety, and other areas that our staff are trained and educated in, and helps them in terms of how to speak to the client and family about those issues. It was a great learning experience for everyone.”

Other notable successes include an event management system developed to investigate client events and employee injuries, a health and safety training schedule, and a 14% reduction in the number of work time lost injuries. But quality improvement never ends. The Accreditation Program runs on a three year cycle during which Acclaim will conduct an annual Prospective Analysis, administer new surveys, provide further education and training for staff, and take every step to ensure its programs remain relevant to the needs of its clients.

 “What it really does for everybody is assure them that another organization besides Acclaim Health says we have a quality driven organization,” Angela says. “A client can go to our website, see that we’re accredited, and know that somebody external has given us the seal of approval. We ARE doing what we’re supposed to be doing in delivering client service. People can be assured that we meet these national standards. It means we’re doing a good job.”

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Acclaim Health and Community Care Services is a non-profit, charitable organization providing quality health care services to the Halton regions