As we enter into this year’s audit cycle, I thought it would be important to provide a refresher on the purpose of the audit process and a reminder on how important your contributions are to ensuring a successful audit. While there are different types of audits, the focus of my message is on the Continuing Care Heath Service Standards audits.
In Alberta, the Ministry of Health is ultimately responsible for ensuring the delivery of quality publicly funded health care. One of the ways that this is done is through the application of the Continuing Care Health Service Standards (CCHSS). These standards are a legislated requirement and set the minimum requirement that Operators must comply with in the provision of Health Care. Our performance on how well Operators meet these standards is measured through an audit process lead by Alberta Health Services.
At Bethany, we continually work on ensuring we are compliant with CCHS standards and do this through the Quality and Safety Committees at each site. All of the work that you do in completing checklists and internal audits help us to identify any quality and safety risks and opportunities and ensure continuous quality improvement remains a common goal. Your daily commitment to excellence in resident and family centered care is evident in how families and residents share their experiences with auditors.
Alberta Health Services has recently made some changes to the way they conduct the CCHSS audits and Bethany had its first audit under this new structure on June 5 and 6 at Bethany Calgary. I am happy to say that the audit went very well and the process was very collaborative in nature. While there are some things we need to work on, we are doing many things well and in fact, are leaders in some areas. This is particularly true of organization wide initiatives such as Service Excellence, Resident and Family Councils and Gentle Persuasive Approach dementia care training for staff. The auditors were also impressed with our use of technology-based initiatives such as the Electronic Health Care Record and Point of Care, PolicyTech and the Momentum resident safety system.
Please continue to bring your quality improvement ideas forward through your site Quality and Safety Committees; your suggestions are valuable. Thank you for your continued commitment to ensuring safe, high quality care for our residents.
As always, I welcome any ideas or suggestions you may have. Please send them to me at nancy.hughes@bethanyseniors.com.
Regards, Nancy
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