Business View - July 2015 31
tive constituencies.
Working through partnerships with external stakehold-
ers is our modus operandi. Some of these partners
include the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, the Ca-
nadian Institute for Health Information, the Canadian
Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, all of the pro-
vincial health quality councils, and so on. Together we
work to eliminate duplication, ensure continuity of lan-
guage, and examine opportunities for synergy.
We issue a quarterly newsletter for health care leaders
and surveyors, and a semi-annual newsletter for other
stakeholder leaders. We’re proud of our website and
I already mentioned our Leading Practices, which are
available in a database there. We have a semi-annu-
al publication called Quality Matters, which provides
a platform for sharing information about quality and
safety in health care. We’re increasing our presence on
social media to better inform the public about accredi-
tation. Accreditation is not a given across the country
and it’s not a given in every sector. It is important that
the public understands what accreditation is and what
it’s not. Accreditation is not a guarantee of high-quality
delivery, it’s not a housekeeping seal of approval, but
rather, it’s a commitment by the organization to take
actions that will help them to deliver quality care. The
issue of informing and helping to educate the public
about accreditation is absolutely critical.
BUSINESS VIEW: Looking five years down the road,
what are your priorities for the organization between
now and then? How do you anticipate things might
look different than they do now?
NICKLIN:
I think we need to improve the accredita-
tion program so that it is increasingly flexible, suitable
for organizations of all sizes and complexities. Health
care organizations want to have access to more data,
use the accreditation data to help them with decision-
making, create their own reports, etc. When we give
information to an organization, we need to ensure that
it is useful; that the accreditation results can be inte-
grated into their quality plans so that it has relevance
and can help them move forward.
I would also like to see the program effectively monitor
the patient’s transition across the continuum. While
the standards are increasingly client-centred, the
structure of the program is such that it is organization-
focused rather than patient journey-focused. We need
to start looking at how we can shape accreditation so
that it follows the patient journey through the system.
Up until ten years ago, accreditation was seen as a
project – something you prepared for in a three to four-
year cycle and revved up to prepare. Then the survey-
ors visited and afterward, you’d breathe a deep sigh
of relief that it was over. Since 2008, and the release
of our Qmentum program, we have re-shaped the pro-
gram so that it can be woven into an organization’s
quality improvement program.
HEALTHCARE
