mood of anticipation and excitement filled the room in a Kowloon hotel on 5 March as the First Appointment Ceremony of Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (Hong Kong) Surveyors was held.

As we all know, the HA is participating in the Hong Kong pilot scheme for hospital accreditation. The Ceremony marked a major milestone in our mission and journey to attain healthcare excellence. It also acknowledged the newly appointed local surveyors, who were selected by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), for their dedication, commitment and contribution to the Hong Kong accreditation programme.

A total of 21 ACHS (Hong Kong) Surveyors were appointed at the Ceremony. It is expected that more local surveyors will be needed as the number of hospitals participating in the accreditation programme increases.

The HA's Senior Advisor (Medical Affairs) Dr Lawrence Lai chairs the ACHS Hong Kong Programme Support Committee (PSC) which is charged with the role and responsibility to support ACHS in managing the Hong Kong based surveyor workforce and surveyor system. Dr Lai tells HASLink that he is delighted to see so many colleagues who are interested to become and work as surveyors. "This is solid proof of their commitment to the HA's drive to attain continuous quality improvement. More significantly, the enthusiastic participation and support by local surveyors from both private and public hospitals is a clear demonstration of enhanced public-private collaboration in the pilot scheme."

Dr Lai adds that hospital accreditation has won the support of both public and private hospitals, with five public and three private hospitals participating in the pilot scheme this year. The 21 newly appointed local surveyors also come from both the public and private sectors. To meet the different needs of participating hospitals, the surveyors have been selected from very diverse and specialised healthcare backgrounds, and they include doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and managers.

The PSC received more than 120 nominations for training as local ACHS surveyors. To be chosen as a surveyor trainee, each applicant had to possess certain key attributes and satisfy specific requirements, including, among other things, at least five years of working experience in their field of expertise, preferably at senior management level during the last 10 years; good interpersonal skills; ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing; ability to create teams and work within teams as well as commitment to and good understanding of the concepts of hospital accreditation programme and principles of continuous quality improvement.

We invited two of the surveyors to share their experiences and feelings with us.

Dr Jack Hung is the Hospital Superintendent of Evangel Hospital. He is well acquainted with the concepts and importance of hospital accreditation to improving the quality of healthcare service as he has over 10 years of experience conducting hospital accreditation authorised by an international accrediting organisation. However, Dr Hung had no contact with the ACHS until 2007, when he first met some of its consultants in Hong Kong. This encounter made quite an impression on him, and he firmly believed that ACHS surveyor training would enable him to enhance his hospital's service quality. He therefore went to Australia for the purpose in 2008. At that time, Dr Hung didn't have the slightest idea that Hong Kong would one day launch a hospital accreditation pilot scheme, let alone that he would be nominated by the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association to be one of their representatives in ACHS' Hong Kong Programme Support Group.

Dr Hung believes that "accreditation can help staff to understand that risk management is all about quality improvement, nothing else and that both patients and hospitals will benefit from it." Dr Hung has met a number of the other local surveyors during the past few months. He says he has learnt a lot from them. "Many of our local surveyors are very experienced in their respective fields. By sharing and learning from one another, we can now understand much better the problems each other is facing. Dr Hung adds that he is confident that "there is room for improvement in every hospital. Although ACHS standards are high, participating hospitals can learn from one another, and remind one another of what they should do to adhere to best practice."

Like Dr Hung, Mrs Fan Wong, the Quality Assurance Manager of Union Hospital, has extensive experience in hospital accreditation. Having taken care of the Hospital's accreditation programme for over 10 years, she strongly agrees that "accreditation is a very important means for continuous improvement. Over 10 years ago, many of our staff didn't know much about the concepts of accreditation. They thought that accreditation was simply nitpicking. Now, reporting, monitoring, self-assessment as well as compliance with standards and targets are the norm which forms part of our culture. Our colleagues now see that self evaluation for continuous quality improvement is simply very much part of their regular work routine. Therefore, we find the pilot programme for hospital accreditation another value added exercise for all of us in Union Hospital."

Mrs Wong says that participating in the pilot scheme as a local surveyor has broadened her horizons. She also thinks that the pilot scheme reinforces the same view points her Chief Hospital Manager said over 10 years ago: "Through hospital accreditation, the public and our patients could understand more about the practices and systems we engage in private hospitals. As a result, they will get to know that our service mission embraces the guiding principle of patient safety and well being as first priority, where service quality is of paramount importance"

The pilot scheme for hospital accreditation will be rolled out in phases for the eight participating hospitals. Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital will be the first HA hospital to undergo the ACHS organisation-wide survey for hospital accreditation. If you are interested in finding out more about the pilot scheme, please visit http://qsd.home > Hot Picks > Pilot Hospital Accreditation.