Accreditation Canada Draft Leadership Standard

[A Former User]

The public is invited to comment on the new draft accreditation standards for health and social services leadership. I encourage you to review and provide your insights, especially on the patient engagement content. The online consultation can be found at https://healthstandards.org/public-reviews/

[A Former User]

There's so much we can review right now, and finding the time is difficult. \thanks for this one Lynn.

The others I have seen and plan to do are:

CSA - Please review this new draft standard by August 21, 2019, CSA Z317.12 Cleaning and disinfection of health care facilities, being developed by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Technical Subcommittee on Cleaning and Disinfection of Health Care Facilities. Click here https://publicreview.csa.ca/Home/Details/3487. A one-time registration is required if you have not been to the site before.

Government of Canada - difference between promotional and non promotional messages in health products. For this one you have to ask them to send you the draft

"The Distinction Between Promotional and Non-promotional Messages and Activities for Health Products"

Annette

[A Former User]

Hi Lynn

I worked on that Leadership Standard for hours, and did the Consultation. I did not read every word but I found many areas where the patient view could be expressed or included more productively. That being said, I could tell that patients and caregivers had been involved. IT sounded more inclusive than I would have expected.

BUT

Did you know it will cost us $100 to access the standard once it is completed?

This is what the contact said when I emailed about that issue

"Thanks so much for your email and for providing feedback on the Leadership for Health Services standard public review.

Your concern regarding the financial barrier to accessing standards is a valid one and it does resonate with us. Our challenge is that we are non-profit organization that is not funded by government and the use of standards at this point is not mandatory. Therefore, we do charge for standards to be able to continue the work we do. We do under specific circumstances make a publication available at no cost - we make this determination by assessing such requests on a case-by case basis. Some examples in the past have been related to educational, research, or legislative purposes. Barriers to accessing the standard may also be considered.

Speaking more long-term, facilitating access to standards is definitely a specific priority area for HSO. As an enterprise we are looking at different models of standard accessibility as part of our value creation plan. We are working to determine a sustainable system that will enable us to continue developing high quality, people-centred standards with the collaborative engagement of all stakeholders and subject matter experts, while making them as accessible as possible to all stakeholders to maximize their exposure and impact in practice. This is an ongoing challenge for standards development organizations that I would like to assure you we are working to resolve, both independently as well as in collaboration with other standards development organizations.

Thank you for your invaluable support of this work, and please do not hesitate to reach out with further questions or concerns."

Neeta Gurnani / Program Manager, Standards
Health Standards Organization (HSO)

[A Former User]

I tried to contact a friend at HSO but she's away, so I responded to Neeta's letter, and managed to tactfully avoid saying that they are exploiting us . (At least not in plain language)

I would still urge people to get involved giving feedback if they can. I believe our ongoing efforts will ultimately change the situation, but it always takes more than one of us.

"Thank you for your reply Neeta

I realize that HSO is a non-profit organization, but giving access to your standards to patients who take the time to comment on them does not have a negative impact on your bottom line. There is no cost involved and we are not potential purchasers.

I am not worried about accessibility for "all stakeholders", rather a subset, namely patients and caregivers. When you ask us to have input into Standards, in my case the Leadership for Health Services Standard public review, I believe that giving us access to the completed Standard that we helped to create is the lowest bar of acknowledgement of our unpaid contributions.

None of your case by case examples cover a situation at all similar to that of a patient. We don't have educational, research, or legislative purposes, except in the general sense of our own or other patients' health literacy.

In this case the issue to me is how we are valued. Patients do not have a balance sheet like most of your stakeholders do. In fact I would argue that those of us who are willing to spend our time on something as time consuming as standards should be welcomed and not shut out of accessing the results that we hope will include our views.

In fact when we can't see the results we have no way of knowing if our input even made a difference."

Annette

[A Former User]

Another response: It is sounding more promising now - ---

"Thank you so much for raising these concerns - I have forwarded them to the Director of Standards, Darryl Kingston, and Patient Lead, Helene Campbell for discussion with the leadership team as they look into changes needed with current policies to ensure they are reflective of patient and people-centred values.

Please let us know if there is anything further you would like to add.

We really appreciate and value your engagement in the development of health standards, and in challenging us to be better."

Thank you,

Neeta

[A Former User]

Hello Annette. I worked on this standard as did many other passionate patient partners from across Canada. We made sure we were pushing and embedding the patient and family voice into this standard. Like many things we have to respect that all organizations are on their own people centred journey and there is a culture change involved. So we need to keep gently and supportively push this and we will get there but like the patient centred journey in canada and around the world it takes time and intentional conversations. Which is what happens for this and so many offer standards.

Keep sending comments for as a core team we look at each and everyone of the comments.

Heather

Sent via Groupsite Mobile.

[A Former User]

The signs of the work you and the others did are evident throughout the Standard. I don't know what the previous version looked like but I assume this is a sea change for them.

I think they have a few strong nudges from us on the access front, so we'll see what develops. I am happy to know that I am not the only person who sees this as an issue where we can gently push in the right direction (our right direction : ) ), and hope to see a change.

Annette

[A Former User]

Annette,

I get a copy of Accreditation Standards from the Hospital board I work with. Any accredited organization you work with will have them and should give them to you.

Though I agree those standards mandatory under Accreditation Canada should be available for everyone, but not all standards are mandatory.

[A Former User]

Hi Annette,

just returned from a refreshing holiday with family. Good to go and dig into some PFA activities. I tried to open the standard for cleaning and disinfecting...it is no longer available.

[A Former User]

Good for you Annette. I looked at the Standards doc and it was just too large for the time I had to provide any substantive feedback. I completely agree that if our feedback is valued, we at least need to see the results of it.

Take care

Diana

[A Former User]

Thanks Gwen, Kathy and Diana

I might just try to get the standards from my hospital just to see what happens. I am on the Community Advisory Committee so will report back.

I might still do feedback on one more Kathy. It was an interesting process - just very time consuming to do right, and in fact I did not read every single word. It was still easy to find things to discuss in the Standard. Still I flagged by the middle and then picked and chose what I read after about page 30.

Thanks for the encouragement Diana. I was really surprised when I got to the end and found the eStore information. We are letting them know it's an issue and working on change. So we are being reasonable and what we want is also only fair.

Annette