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L’accréditation des hôpitaux: l’indispensable phase d’éveil: Proposals to create a friendly environment in French-speaking Belgian hospitals for the accreditation process

par Herbaux, Denis ;Lecocq, Dan ;Gainvorste, Dominique ;Zandecki, Nathalie ;Laurent, Marius ;Jacquerye, Agnès ; [et al.]
Organisme financeur Communauté Française de Belgique
Publication Publié, 2013-10-31

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Résumé :

While accreditation has been widely used in many countries to improve quality and safety of care, this process is a relatively new concept for healthcare professionals in the French-speaking community of Belgium. And as all new concepts do, it raises many questions about methods, costs and potential benefits. It is worth noticing that these questions vary depending on the group of professionals taken into account.Under the supervision of the Belgian French-Speaking Community’s Ministry of Health, santhea, the largest French speaking association of hospitals, and the School of Public Health of the Université Libre de Bruxelles have been asked to develop a guide for academic hospitals as well as general hospitals describing how hospitals can prepare themselves in order to start an accreditation process. The study began in November 2012 and ended in October 2013. After a short description of the accreditation concept as well as the (many) particularities of the Belgium’s institutional context, three accreditation manuals are compared, in terms of content and philosophy, which leads to the conclusion that while most themes are common, the philosophy can be quite different. Next we test to what extend accreditation norms are in line with everyday work of professionals. We find out that most norms are considered by hospital professionals as being important, which means that the accreditation process could be accepted among them. By evaluating the implementation of a set of accreditation norms in four hospitals, we observed that some of these norms are already quite good implemented, but others are not. The study also proposes a tool which gives hospitals the possibility to evaluate if they are ready to start an accreditation process. It has been developed on the basis of literature references and accreditation manuals customized for French speaking hospitals. The tool is composed of 46 criteria grouped in 16 domains. Once used in a few hospitals, benchmarking will be proposed.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are then used to explore the level of knowledge of accreditation among health professionals and how they feel about it. From the various investigations, it seems that before embarking on this long journey called “accreditation”, it is essential to go through an awareness-raising phase to make sure that the whole staff adhere to accreditation process, participating actively and being deeply involved. Based on advices of accreditation experts, hospital leadership appears to be essential. Therefore, the guide suggests organizing study days for hospital management boards to initiate this awareness-raising phase. The training sessions will begin in 2014 and will be offered to the 91 French speaking hospitals. A methodology will also be suggested to hospitals to raise awareness at the local level. This guide is available free of charge and is distributed by, among others, the "accreditation platform”, whose goal is to help hospitals to improve quality and safety in healthcare. This platform, created in March 2013, brings together many actors of the healthcare sector. It also contributes to the awareness-raising of hospitals and the need of preparation for accreditation The first lessons from the local changes in terms of awareness-raising in hospitals will be obtained as from late 2014.Our work offers concrete proposals to create a friendly environment in hospitals for the accreditation process. We think that accreditation can be accepted by professionals “from the boardroom” as well as those at the bedside. Accreditation could thus serve as a catalyst to lead the whole institution to develop continuous improvement in quality and safety.All findings confirm our belief that both an awareness-raising and a preparation phase are essential before entering in an accreditation process. This is especially true now for French-speaking Belgian hospitals.