2022 End-of-year message from ISQua CEO, Carsten Engel

It is time, once again, to take a break, review the year that will soon be history and look forward to the year ahead of us.

For me, as the CEO of ISQua, the Brisbane conference was no doubt one of the highlights of the year. It was terrific to meet again for the first time in three years as the ISQua Community. When we come together, it is an important social event. Our hosts and local conference partners, AGPAL QIP, had made great efforts to make it successful; their hospitality was marvellous and coming together at such a beautiful place as Brisbane added to the experience. Many of us will have taken the opportunity to explore Brisbane and Queensland further before or after the conference. My family and I for sure brought home unforgettable memories.

But the conference is also, above all, a manifestation of what ISQua is about: “Knowledge, Network, Voice” is our well-known tagline; when we updated ISQua’s strategy during the past year, we added Action. We are not promoting Knowledge, just to nurture it in the neat gardens of Academia, where we can behold its fragile beauty far from the disturbing and messy world; it should inform, inspire, and empower action so that it will serve as our powerful contribution to meeting the mission, we have cherished and will continue to cherish: “To inspire and drive improvement in health, and the safety and quality of healthcare worldwide”. The real success criterion for our conference is that attendees bring home and give voice in their networks to ideas, insights, tools, and methods that can help them meet the challenges they face in their daily work.

Challenges for healthcare are abundant and well-known. We must achieve the Quintuple Aim: Improving population health, enhancing the care experience, reducing costs, improving the experience of providing care, and advancing health equity, while facing difficulties in recruiting and retaining workforce, financial strain, demographic change, and climate change, and remaining prepared for the next crisis.

There is no quick way to fix it, but there is much knowledge that will allow us to devise solutions. I believe that all involved: Patients and families, professionals, researchers, leaders, managers and policymakers must come together to co-develop, co-produce and be jointly accountable for bringing us forward. ISQua must support that the knowledge needed is neither unavailable nor unnoticed.

So, what will ISQua do in 2023?

Preparations for our next conference in Seoul are already moving forward at full speed. The theme of the conference is “Technology, Culture, and Coproduction: Looking to the Horizon of Quality and Safety”. I look forward to meeting you in the vibrant capital of the Republic of Korea.

The Principles for the Development of Health and Social Care Standards have served us and our clients, the healthcare accreditors, well for years. It is time now to give them a thorough overhaul to ensure that ISQua accreditation can remain the gold standard in healthcare.

Our educational programmes, including the ISQua Fellowship, have a great potential to contribute to bringing relevant and usable knowledge to the coal face in an affordable way. We will continue to enhance and leverage that potential.

All the highly appreciated members of the staff at the ISQua office and I are dedicating our time to make this happen, but without you: Members, Partners, Experts, Surveyors, and Academicians, we will not be able to succeed. We thank you for your support during 2022 and look forward to working for you and with you in 2023.

May the new year bring hope, progress, and joy in addition to the challenges, worries, and backlashes we must also be prepared for. 

Warm wishes, 

Carsten

Carsten Engel

ISQua CEO