Posted by The IWK Health Centre is proud to announce that it has been Accredited with Exemplary Standing by Accreditation Canada, the major national accrediting body for health services organizations across Canada. The IWK met 98.8 per cent of the 2,969 standards reviewed by the independent body.
“If we talked only about strengths, we’d be here all day,” said Andrew Williams, CEO and President of Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance and lead accreditation surveyor.
The IWK was applauded for accomplishments across the organization in areas such as patient and family centred care, collaboration, safety, improvement work and LEAN efforts, communication and enthusiasm. The accreditation process has a significant focus on patient safety and there are 29 required organizational practices which the IWK must comply with in order to achieve exemplary accreditation status.
“You’ve got a patient safety culture that’s running rampant through your organization,” said surveyor Ken Wou, a medication quality consultant at Alberta Health Services.
Accreditation is an ongoing process of assessing health and social services organizations against standards of excellence to identify what is being done well and what needs to be improved. Accreditation is important because it helps create better health care and social services for patients, families, and communities. An organization may receive one of four possible decisions—Not Accredited, Accredited, Accredited with Commendation, or Accredited with Exemplary Standing.
“Accreditation provides us with the opportunity to be evaluated using nationally accepted standards of excellence,” says Dr. Krista Jangaard, President and CEO of the IWK Health Centre. “This rating affirms the hard work of our staff to go above and beyond the requirements and continuously improve the care we provide to our patients, families and community.”
Accreditation provides health care and service organizations an independent, third-party assessment of their organization using standards built upon best practices used and validated by similar organizations around the world. Participation is voluntary and conducted every four years.