Continuous quality development forms a central part of our sustainability work.
High-quality veterinary care is not only based on expertise and advanced medical equipment, but also on the ability to constantly evolve and improve. Patient safety and satisfactory medical outcomes are the result of a long chain of decisions, actions, initiatives and priorities and different treatments until the medical problem has been resolved in the best possible way. At AniCura, we are convinced that constant improvements can be implemented in every area.
QualiCura
AniCura established its own, proprietary medical quality development program - QualiCura - in 2015. The purpose of the program is to increase patient safety and to improve medical outcome.
Nine focus areas were identified as particularly important to fulfil the program’s dual purpose:
- Encouraging professional development and specialisation
- Creating and sharing medical best practices
- Improving professional communications skills
- Providing reliable diagnostic medicine
- Ensuring wiser antimicrobial use
- Monitoring surgical site infections
- Securing proper infection prevention and control
- Enabling good incident handling
- Promoting patient medical record quality
Customized and measurable
In several of these focus areas, AniCura sets certain input or output-oriented quality indicators by which the animal hospitals can be measured and their progress compared over time and with other hospitals. An example of a quality metric is the number of post-operative infections, i.e. surgical-site infections. Data from various metrics is compiled and feedback comprising information on results and discussion points is provided to the animal hospital. AniCura strongly believes that every animal hospital, individual, process and system can always be better.
Structured quality development
AniCura has several structured initiatives to strengthen our quality in different regards:
- AniCura's Scientific Council supports our clinics in securing evidence-based care, quality assurance and research strategy. The council also reviews research applications and allocates funds from AniCura's Research Fund.
- AniCura's medical interest groups constitute the most important platforms for sharing veterinary knowledge within the Group.
- QualiCura visits. The veterinary medical quality team performs quality oriented visits to all new clinics joining AniCura. The purpose is to establish a relationship and understand clinic specific quality improvement plans and challenges.
- Role models. Role models are identified to share clinically proven examples of improvements.
- Quality coordinators. Each AniCura clinic appoints a Quality Coordinator responsible for the clinic's quality improvement processes and communication.
- Quality conference. AniCura hosts annual quality conferences where all clinics participate to share knowledge with focus on pragmatic solutions in daily operations.
