Accreditation as Comprehensive Cancer Center will have at the end of 2024 oncology hospital “Agios Savvas” by OECI, which is the accrediting body for 123 oncology centers across Europe.

This is what the director of the hospital points out while speaking to APE-MPE Olga Balaurawhich emphasizes that this accreditation already has and will in the future result in the best health services for cancer patients in our country.

“Accreditation means that the hospital is obliged to implement specific medical, nursing and administrative protocols not only for operation but also for treatment and management of patients. In other words, we provide our patients with better quality health services. Services, which are monitored, are evaluated annually and depending on our results we are obliged to comply with specific procedures in order to achieve the goals”, explains Mrs. Balaoura speaking to Michalis Kefalogiannis.

The first evaluation of the “Agios Savvas” hospital by an international committee of the organization is scheduled for next May, and then it will enter the final stage of accreditation. “I believe that by the end of the year we will be able to receive the accreditation”, points out the administrator of the hospital and adds: “The prerequisites are quantitative as well as qualitative. We have achieved the goal of quantitative data since joining the organization, as our numbers are extremely high. As an example, I will mention that at “Agios Savvas” we perform over 25,000 oncological treatments per year and over 16,500 radiotherapy treatments per year, which automatically makes us an oncology center. In terms of quality data, we had to work a lot and for this reason many of our laboratory, pathology and surgical departments ran departmental certifications in order to be able to meet the requirements of the accreditation and also to be able to understand the procedures that they will have to follow every day in order to provide patients quality health services”.

The aim is to further reduce waiting times for treatments and operations

Ms. Balaura explains that a lot of effort has been made to implement the guidelines regarding waiting times. Accreditation protocols state that the wait for receiving oncological treatment of a patient from the day of the first diagnosis should not exceed 10-15 days, for surgical treatment should not exceed 20-30 days and for radiation therapy for 30 days.

“We are working hard in this direction and I would venture to say that we have reached a high percentage in achieving a reduction in waiting times for oncology treatments, we are also very close to achieving the goal in terms of surgical waits but we still need work in radiotherapy as well as some cases, we exceed the one-month waiting period”, points out the administrator of the “Agios Savvas” hospital.

Apart from the reduction of waiting times, the main benefit for the patient if an oncology hospital receives the accreditation, is that it will be able to receive better quality health services, as “Agios Savvas” joins a network of 123 oncology centers throughout Europe.

“This means the exchange of know-how, the possibility of training in new treatments or techniques, the possibility of expanded oncology councils for patients’ cases that are possibly more special, access of patients to innovative treatments through clinical studies, access of the hospital to more European programs”, says Ms. Balaura, adding that by joining the organization, the hospital collaborates with other European oncology centers in at least 5 HORIZON programs related to cancer research.

It is worth noting that with this accreditation a national goal is fulfilled as it is a priority and strategic goal of the European Union for the treatment of cancer to have at least one integrated cancer center in each member state.

Clinical studies are the key to better treatment of patients

Another challenging goal for accreditation is doubling clinical trials at the hospital. Specifically, the goal of the accreditation is to allocate over 8,000,000 euros to studies as a cancer center and to include 10% of newly diagnosed patients in them.

“In “Agios Savvas” we have about 5,000 new diagnoses a year, so we are talking about 500 patients enrolled in studies,” says Ms. Balaoura and continues: “Currently in the hospital we have studies worth 4,000,000 euros and only 150 are enrolled in them patients. As you understand we should work systematically to attract more clinical studies. For this reason we created an autonomous department of clinical studies to facilitate the scientific staff in all administrative parts so that they can practice the scientific part more easily. In addition, we signed a strategic agreement with the company HACRO, which undertook to train our staff, help us set up the clinical trial office administratively, but also inform us about the appropriate way to attract and include more patients in the clinical trials.”

We asked the administrator of “Agios Savvas” Hospital how the accreditation process upgrades the services of a hospital as a whole and how much more flexible it makes it in collaborations with other hospitals in Greece and abroad.

“Through this whole process we are becoming more extroverted and this happens because we are obliged by our international accreditation to closely monitor all developments in oncology to participate in educational and research programs and through all of this we are also evaluated for the quality of services that we offer but also for the level of scientific know-how we possess”, answered Mrs. Balaoura, who also referred to the improvement of the infrastructure, pointing out that many projects are already underway at the hospital, such as the building upgrade of the operating rooms, the renovation of two floors of hospital where a youth unit will be created so that younger patients can receive their treatment in a better environment.

“We also have the overall energy upgrade of the “Agios Savvas” building. And of course the installation of the fourth linear accelerator which we believe will help us a lot in smoothing out the waiting times for radiotherapy”.