OMNI's accreditation process moves company forward
Assessment is helping OMNI continuously improve
Wednesday April 23, 2008 -- Deron Hamel
PETERBOROUGH, Ont. – OMNI Health Care’s recent accreditation assessment is providing the company with an avenue to continuously evaluate and improve itself.

The company is using its assessment scorecard to help improve areas where the company received lower marks. Some of these areas are already being addressed, says Candace Chartier, OMNI’s chief operating officer.

Minimizing restraints is one area surveyors from the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA), the accrediting body which conducted the corporate assessment, said the company needed to improve.

Working in collaboration with Shoppers HomeHealthCare and physiotherapists working within the homes, OMNI has already started ramping up its restraint program in response to the evaluation.

“We’re doing a complete audit with Shoppers and our physiotherapists and we’re doing a whole bunch of different training, and restraint (minimization) is going to be one of the quality indicators,” explains Chartier.

Moving forward with the results of the assessment, the company will be looking at each of the areas needing improvement and tackle them in order of priority, says Chartier.

“There weren’t that many, but minimizing restraints is what we’re going to focus on up front and getting the results (brought) to the homes,” she says.

The corporate evaluation is providing home office with an overview of the company as a whole so the organization can look at ways to help make improvements where needed, says Chartier.

“It really highlighted what the corporate office has to offer to the company,” she says.

From March 2 to 7, 16 of OMNI’s 17 long-term care homes were assessed by surveyors from the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA).

In their preliminary report, the surveyors identified only 40 of 580 areas that needed to be improved upon — a remarkable accomplishment considering the assessments represent OMNI’s first attempt at corporate accreditation, says Chartier.

OMNI expects to receive its final report from the CCHSA in May or June.

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