SWEET Peer Review Program
To get certified as a SWEET Center of Reference / Collaborative Centers, the centers have to undergo the SWEET peer review program. The SWEET peer review team is charged with reviewing the pediatric healthcare teams and services to determine compliance with all SWEET criteria and to assess quality of care and treatment in relation to clinical outcomes and patient experience.
The goal is to repeat this process every 5 years, so that all SWEET centers receive help and guidance on how to remain compliant with the necessary criteria for up-to-date, efficient pediatric diabetes care.
The process consists of the following key steps:
- Centers do a self-assessment against 10 SWEET Center of Reference criteria and prove their self-assessment by uploading the benchmark report and the SWEET center information for desktop review.
- External validation of applications will be executed to check that all formalities are correctly met
- Peer review visits for the accreditation of Collaborative Center or Center of Reference
The HANDBOOK FOR THE SWEET PEER REVIEW PROGRAMME describes the method and procedures for carrying out the Programme, and can be requested by all SWEET members by writing an email to sweet-project@hka.de.
Why is auditing important?
Peer review needs to be a key part of the delivery and monitoring of any service or activity and those involved need to demonstrate that this element of monitoring and learning is integral to the process of compliance with fundamental standards and of improvement.
The program adheres to a number of the founding principles of peer review:
- An emphasis on being clinically led
- International consistency in the delivery of the program
- A focus on improvement
- A focus on system and services within and across organizations to ensure co-ordination of patient care
- A focus on coordination of patient pathways
- Peer on peer review
Management of the PRP, our hub structure:
The Peer Review Program is led by a Project Director who provides strategic leadership and direction to ensure implementation of an effective and efficient quality assurance process, supported by a team within the SWEET office in Hannover. The Project Director liaises on a regular basis with the Chair of the SWEET Group, and communicates the progress and evolution of the program via the SWEET Advisory board.
In addition to the central SWEET Hannover office, a number of coordinating hubs have been established across the world. The hubs purpose is ensuring consistent implementation of the Peer Review Program of pediatric children and young people’s diabetes services by engaging Centers within the Hub in the operational and strategic development of the SWEET Peer Review Program.
The program adheres to a number of the founding principles of peer review:
A coordinator is nominated for each of the hubs and those coordinators report to the Project Director. At the time of writing there are five hubs shown in the following table:
The program adheres to a number of the founding principles of peer review:
| HUB Name | HUB Leader |
|---|---|
| Hub Leader | Natasa Bratina (Ljubljana, Slovenia) |
| Europe | Roque Cardona-Hernandez (Barcelona, Spain) |
| Asia | Banshi Saboo (Ahmedabad, India) |
| Australasia | Elizabeth Davis (Perth, Australia) |
| America | Priya Prahalad (Stanford, USA) |
| Africa | Zineb Imane (Rabat, Morocco) |
Aims and Outcomes of the SWEET Peer Review Program:
The SWEET Program aims to improve care for children and young people and their families affected by pediatric diabetes by:
SAFE SERVICES
ensuring services are as safe as possible;
IMPROVING QUALITY
improving the quality and effectiveness of care;
IMPROVING EXPERIENCE
improving the patient and carer experience;
FAIR REVIEWS
undertaking independent, fair reviews of services;
DEVELOPMENT & LEARNING
providing development and learning for all involved;
ENCOURAGING GOOD PRACTICE
encouraging the dissemination of good practice.
The outcomes of the SWEET Peer Review Program are:
CONFIRMATION
confirmation of the quality of pediatric diabetic services;
SPEEDY IDENTIFICATION
speedy identification of major shortcomings in the quality of pediatric diabetic services where they occur so that rectification can take place;
PUBLISHED REPORTS
published reports that provide accessible public information about the quality of pediatric diabetic services;
VALIDATED INFORMATION
validated information which is available to other stakeholders
The Peer Review Program should be conducted in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation between the Pediatric Diabetic Centers and the review teams.
Statements for audited centers - Peer Review can make a difference!
‘Being reviewed by your peers is a powerful agent for change’
“The visit helped to improve the team work, reinforce clinical, scientific & educational goals in our center and catch the attention of the administration, reminding them of the urgent need for additional staff.”
“It allowed us to get an external perspective of our center. It made us realize that we have some good qualities that we should enhance. It was a catalyst to make some changes: we had a nurse rotation system which we didn’t agree with, and this rotation ended after the Sweet visit!”
“We work as part of a large international network and feel the responsibility of developing as a team and as a center with a final goal: improve care and quality of life of our children and young people with diabetes.”
‘Provides an opportunity for self-reflection, external comment & facilitates change.’
“We found a solution with IT to make the data collection easier and faster than before since we have a huge amount of data.”
“We have let our hospital board members know about how our diabetes center is positioned in terms of clinical structure and use of technology using the information provided by reviewers.”
“We increased the frequency of the meetings for discussion of clinical cases.”
“HBA1c levels are decreasing.”
“Our Unit’s Facebook page was created, in order to be closer to our patients.”
“Nurse’s backup improved.”
“One more Pediatric Endocrinologist was hired.”
“Two young and motivated medical doctors joined our team.”
“We have designed a plan to increase the number of pump start-ups.”
Past Peer Review Program Manager
Stephen Parsons
United Kingdom
Peer Review Program Manager
Natasa Bratina
Slovenia