Developing online accreditation education resources for health care services: An Australian case study

Quality problem or issue In 2013, ‘National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards’ accreditation became mandatory for most health care services in Australia. Developing and maintaining accreditation education is challenging for health care services, particularly those in regional and rural settings. With accreditation imminent, there was a need to support health care services through the process. Initial assessment A needs analysis identified limited availability of open access online resources for national accreditation education. Choice of solution A standardized set of online accreditation education resources was the agreed solution to assist regional and rural health care services meet compulsory requirements. Implementation Education resources were developed over 3 months with project planning, implementation and assessment based on a program logic model. Evaluation Resource evaluation was undertaken after the first 3 months of resource availability to establish initial usage and stakeholder perceptions. From 1 January 2015 to 31 March 2015, resource usage was 20 272, comprising 12 989 downloads, 3594 course completions and 3689 page views. Focus groups were conducted at two rural and one metropolitan hospital (n = 16), with rural hospitals reporting more benefits. Main user-based recommendations for future resource development were automatic access to customizable versions, ensuring suitability to intended audience, consistency between resource content and assessment tasks and availability of short and long length versions to meet differing users’ needs. Lessons learned Further accreditation education resource development should continue to be collaborative, consider longer development timeframes and user-based recommendations.