National Breast Cancer Screening Program

Department of Health, Australian Government

The BreastScreen Australia accreditation system has played a pivotal role in ensuring that all BreastScreen Australia services deliver safe, high quality breast screening services to women. The accreditation system had helped underpin the success of BreastScreen Australia, but had not been fully reviewed since the inception of the program in 1991. A call from jurisdictional programs to review components of the BreastScreen Australia accreditation process highlighted the need to re-examine the currency and efficiency of the accreditation system nationally.

The BreastScreen Australia Accreditation Review Committee (ARC) was responsible for developing and implementing a refined accreditation system. Susan Garner was a health program evaluation expert on ARC which was established in June 2011 to review the National Accreditation Standards (NAS), Governance and Performance Improvement for the NBCS. ARC responded to the recommendations of a previous evaluation of the NBCS Program to improve the effectiveness and ‘future proof’ the program.

Susan also chaired the Pilot and Implementation Subcommittee which was responsible for evaluating a pilot which applied the revised NAS and governance arrangements was prior to the expected national roll-out of the revised accreditation system in 2015.