By Doriann Geller, ASTRO Communications staff
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way business is conducted in many sectors around the world. Medicine, hard hit in operational activities, embraced telemedicine for patient visits, as well as peer-to-peer consultation, to a greater extent than ever before. ASTRO’s APEx - Accreditation Program for Excellence® curtailed facility site visits in March 2020, when the public health emergency declaration brought travel to a halt and closed many workplaces throughout the United States. In December 2020, after strategic and logistical planning sessions, ASTRO pivoted to offering virtual facility visits, the final step toward APEx accreditation.
“ASTRO decided to offer virtual facility visits when on-site surveys are not possible because of visitor or travel restrictions related to the public health emergency,” said Samantha Dawes, ASTRO director of Quality Improvement. “Baptist MD Anderson staff were willing participants with APEx’s first virtual format, which enabled ASTRO staff to assess the remote processes at both a main site and satellite facility simultaneously.” As a result, Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Jacksonville, Florida, was the first facility to successfully complete the accreditation process virtually.
Baptist MD Anderson’s Michael Olson, MD, PhD, interim division head of Radiation Oncology, and Ann-Marie Grietens, MSN, RN, NE-BC, director of Radiation/Neuro Oncology and Social Services, discussed their accreditation journey and the virtual facility site visit by video conference earlier this year, in April.
The Baptist MD Anderson mission is to provide “care that surrounds our patient and families with everything they need, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.” Ms. Grietens, who was involved in the process from start to finish, said that the accreditation process directly supports that model. To fulfill their missions, they take all aspects of the patient’s journey into consideration and utilize many patient-centered resources, including chaplain and social work support, both of which are in Ms. Grietens’ area of responsibility, she explained. The accreditation process gave them the opportunity to “go back and explore those resources,” she said. “I didn't realize going through it, but the biggest benefit is just pulling the team together and focusing them around these ideas of quality and safety and reminding them that the patient really is at the center of everything.”
Baptist MD Anderson operates two clinics, a main clinic and the South satellite clinic, both of which went through the accreditation process simultaneously. Ms. Greitens remarked that the surveyors “were gracious enough to split out our medical records [review] on different days and times, and the physics interview on different days and times, as well. Because we share resources at both clinics, that allowed my medical records team to be able to do the medical records review for both areas.” She added, “I feel the virtual aspect really was beneficial ― they could do it in [the] virtual app from either location. And Dr. Olson, with the team interview for South [the satellite clinic], was able to call in to participate. I thoroughly enjoyed the virtual aspect of the survey.”
Dr. Olson concurred: “I'm the physician that did [the survey] downtown. Especially for the policy reviews, because it’s electronic and our information is electronic, the virtual format does facilitate some of that information sharing. Everyone's looking at the same screen. I think this process, at least part of it, really lends itself to the to the virtual environment very well.”
Ms. Dawes remarked that the staff at Baptist MD Anderson were “well prepared and enthusiastic throughout the entire accreditation process, which contributed to how smoothly it went, and provided great feedback for ASTRO to learn from.” That feedback included comments from Ms. Grietens, who suggested that facilities undergoing the virtual visit talk to their IT departments to make sure that they are able to upload contiguous, large documents to the platform to ensure that the videos and documentation stay together.
“When I was at South with our physicist, we walked through and did [the video] with my phone,” Ms. Grietens explained. “And then he and I actually came in and did the same thing on a weekend in our downtown clinic. Making sure that we labeled everything appropriately on the website when we were uploading everything was key.”
“It was made very straightforward,” observed Dr. Olson. “Having a virtual [site visit] allowed us to continue normal operations, to work in the meeting with the rest of our day. It was painless. We sat there, it was a conversation, it felt natural. We worked through all the survey questions together, and then we were done. I honestly couldn't believe, when it was all completed, how efficient and easy it really was.”
Ms. Grietens continued, “This was a very positive experience for my team, and I think that we gained a lot out of the preparation ― as much as the actual survey. I highly encourage anyone to follow in our footsteps and take the same journey because they won't regret it.”
Dr. Olson agreed. “I think this is a fabulous process. I honestly believe every center should seek accreditation. Whether they get it or not is not the point. It’s going through the process, that they think about the right questions, because these are the things that we should be focusing on for taking the best care of patients.”
To learn more about APEx, visit the APEx webpages, where you can also request a virtual information session for your team.
