Sharing experiences and building collective projects in quality management: The strength of UNICANCER group.

Abstract

226 Background: UNICANCER is a hospital group entirely devoted to fighting cancer. UNICANCER groups together 20 French Comprehensive Cancer Centers (FCCC), which are private, non-profit establishments with a threefold mission of patient care, research and oncology teaching. They share the same organizational model to take care the patients and they have organized an informal network of quality and risk management In 2005, the FCCC federation (former Unicancer group) was created a Quality department in order to build a common approach to improve the quality of care and patient management in Cancer Centers. One the most important tools to set up this shared works were comparative analysis and feedback system. Methods: Every year, the quality department of Unicancer group coordinated the results of several indicators recorded by each centers. These results were summarized in the benchmarks dashboards to identify the priority actions for the group. Results: Between 2006 and 2014, some collaborative projects have been carried out in various fields: (1) development of the culture of continuous improvement, (2) involvement to the national implementationof hospital quality and safety indicators in France, (3) development of specific indicators of cancer care, (4) implementation of questionnaire survey to assess the in- or outpatient satisfaction. As far as concerned the different results of external assessment (1) the values of quality and safety indicators are above the national average, (2) the Cancer Centers have the best level of “certification” for the French National Authority for Health. Conclusions: The teamwork and benchmarking is an innovative way of working. The level of quality of care and patient management increases steadily in Cancer Centers in France. The next step consists of developing a common standard to keep competitive edge. [Table: see text]