Our Quality Commitment

Accreditation

Port Macquarie Ophthalmic Surgery is fully accredited by the Australian Council on Health Care Standards (ACHS). The accreditation process involves the surveying of the surgery facility by a team of health auditing professionals to measure the standards of quality and safety of services provided.

According to ACHS: ‘Accreditation is a formal process to assist in the delivery of safe, high quality health care based on standards and processes devised and developed by health care professionals for health care services. It is public recognition of achievement of accreditation standards by a health care organisation, demonstrated through an independent external peer assessment of that organisation’s level of performance in relation to the standards.’

This major review occurs every three years with a cycle of self-assessment and partial review during this three year period to ensure that patient quality and safety remain a priority for Port Macquarie Ophthalmic Surgery.

 

Safety and Quality

Each year PMOS develops a Safety and Quality report. This report is intended to provide patients and their carers with information on the various indicators of the safety and quality of our facility.

The safety and quality of the service we provide is our highest priority, and our Quality Management System is currently accredited as being compliant with National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards.

This report is designed to:

  • Meet the requirements for an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Quality Management System
  • Provide a mechanism for reporting of key Safety and Quality Indicators to all stakeholders, including patients, carers, staff and the Board on an annual basis

This has been done by reviewing the key outcomes of our Quality Management System over the past 12 months. The key objectives of our Quality Management System as defined in the Quality Manual are to;
 

  1. Maintain a high level of patient satisfaction
  2. Provide a high standard of care and treatment to all patients
  3. Maintain a high level staff and VMO satisfaction
  4. Maintain a commitment to continuous quality improvement
  5. Ensure that the day surgery meets relevant standards, regulations and legislation
Annual Safety and Quality Report

ACHS Clinical Indicators

The Clinical Indicator Program is a self-checking type system where data collection, analysis and reporting service is provided by the ACHS to member healthcare organisations, such as Port Macquarie Ophthalmic Surgery. It provides a national clinical benchmarking service where submitted data is collated and analysed twice a year and results are provided in the form of general and peer comparative reports which provides a baseline for quality improvement and the opportunity to evaluate progress of our facility.

Our most recent reporting period was January – June 2020. PMOS received two gold stars for the data we submitted for this period. Our first gold star was for the number of booked patients that were assessed before admission and the second gold star was for the number of Toric Intraocular Lenses that were implanted with a planning record present at the time of operation.

Hand Hygiene Australia

Each opportunity to perform hand hygiene is identified as a moment, and the World Health Organisation has developed the ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’ program to highlight the critical times when hand hygiene should be performed by all clinical staff. At Port Macquarie Ophthalmic Surgery, our staff have receive annual education on hand hygiene and complete training on the Five Moments for Hand Hygiene via the Hand Hygiene Australia website.

The Five Moments are:

  • Before Touching a Patient
  • Before a Procedure
  • After a Procedure
  • After Touching a Patient
  • After Touching a Patient’s Belongings or Surroundings

Patient & Consumer Satisfaction

At Port Macquarie Ophthalmic Surgery, we value input from those who matter most: our patients.

On a monthly basis our team conduct patient surveys to gather feedback from those who have experienced our service, in addition to appointing one of our staff members as a Consumer Advocate who seeks consumer feedback on our patient forms in interview-style surveys.

On a quartly basis we invite a Consumer Representative – a member of the local community who has experienced the surgery first-hand – to attend our quality committee meetings to provide feedback and input regarding our organisation’s commitment to redesigning the quality of our care from the delivery of our service to the comfort of our surgery’s facilities.

All feedback and information gathered from our patients and consumers is submitted to our Director of Nursing who actions the quality improvements and reports on them to our Medical Advisory Committee and Board of Directors.