There has never been an accreditation service for benchmarking and evaluation of the quality of CR services. From 2019 -2023 we explored international programs from the European Cardiac Society and the International Council of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (ICCPR). The ICCPR program was determined as the most accessible and affordable to the CR Australian practice context.
In 2020, ACRA and the National Heart Foundation published 10 CR quality indicators (without benchmarks) to inform delivery of best practice service content. In 2021, one of our first steps to evaluate the CR quality of programs, the CHAP team assessed programs through the adherence to these quality indicator measurements.
A survey was undertaken with 23 CR programs in SA providing a baseline for CR service quality improvement initiatives. The survey identifying gaps in measurement of the quality indicators, including post-assessment, HRQOL, medication adherence and exercise capacity and that services did not have data to calculate rate of referral with median wait time being 27 days.
In 2023, the next phase of the process will be to achieve ICCPR Accreditation for the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN), this will make the service the first internationally accredited service in Australia. The remaining 22 services will be involved in a pre-accreditation education process to implement the quality indicators into practice in preparation for the accreditation process.
