Accreditation is the means by which a centre can demonstrate that it is performing a required level of practice in accordance with agreed standards of excellence and certify that it operates an effective quality management system.
If you are applying to JACIE for first time or for a re-accreditation, you are encouraged to download and read the JACIE Applicants Guide. The Applicants Guide gives a general overview of the JACIE Accreditation process - taking you from the initial stage of thinking about applying for JACIE, through the Inspection process, to achieving JACIE Accreditation.
For those looking for guidance in establishing a Quality Programme in their center, the Quality Management Guide is designed to assist in the development and maintenance of a Quality programme for the area of Peripheral Blood and Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation.
JACIE makes use of the Sharepoint environment to share documents with inspectors and centres: in order to conduct a process JACIE offers a license free of cost for Office 365. There is a guide available for the users to check their access to the Microsoft Office 365 services.
How to apply
The steps to apply for accreditation are:
- Submit an application form.
- Sign the Accreditation Agreement with the EBMT
- Submit the pre-inspection documentation
- Go through the on-site inspection & receive the Inspection Report
- Attend to reporting and corrective actions (where these are indicated)
- Receive accreditation and maintain accreditation
For first-time applicants, the form and checklist give JACIE the necessary information to assess if your centre is eligible for accreditation and to understand the structure of your centre or programme and relationships with other institutions.
For renewal applications, you may submit the Inspection Checklist at a later stage of the reapplication process, together with the pre-inspection documentation.
Note that it is always important to start completing the checklist before you submit the application form to reduce the amount of time required when preparing the inspection documentation.
Note that Accredited Centres are no longer required to submit an Annual Report. They are, however, required to proactively inform JACIE of any changes in their centre or to their program. More information and the Changes Form are available in Step 6 on the Application Process page.
Translation of Center's documents
Documents should be in the language spoken in your centre since JACIE would expect to assign inspectors that speak and understand that language. However, there may be exceptions to this:
- Centre is located in a country where no inspectors are available; OR
- JACIE may not have inspectors anywhere that speak the centre’s language; OR
- The transplant community in a given country has requested that only external inspectors be assigned, to avoid conflicts of interest
In these cases, we must resort to other inspectors to perform the inspection. For these inspectors, one of the key parts of their preparation is reading documents made available in advance. Without these documents, it is very difficult for them to arrive on-site adequately prepared, and this would clearly affect the quality of the inspection.
In such cases, JACIE will ask the centre to translate a selection of the documents provided to the inspectors in advance of the inspection and will request the centre to provide local experts to facilitate interviews and understanding of documentation. Please contact the Accreditations Coordinator at jacie@ebmt.org if you have any concerns at all about this part of the process.
English/Spanish Glossary of terms
The Alliance for Harmonisation of Cellular Therapy Accreditation (AHCTA) and Worldwide Network for Blood & Marrow Transplantation (WBMT) along with the Latin American Group for Bone Marrow Transplantation (LABMT) have facilitated the preparation of a simple glossary of quality management terminology to help create awareness and understanding of basic but important quality management terminology among Spanish-speaking transplant professionals.
External consultants
There are many providers and companies offering consultancy services for implementing quality management in healthcare. Many offer preparation for JACIE accreditation among their services. These providers usually offer their services in return for a fee paid by the hospital.
While it is recognised that such providers often perform valuable services and enable transplant programmes to prepare themselves for accreditation, it should be noted that neither JACIE nor EBMT endorse individual providers. Any organisation that is considering using such services should inform itself fully about providers' capacity, knowledge and experience in the same way as it would assess any other service.
Quality Managers
For centres that are members of the EBMT, the standard membership fee of €900 per annum includes a quality manager at no additional cost.
Check with your team, and if you are not already included, ask your Principal Investigator to request the EBMT Executive Office to add you to the membership listing by writing to membership@ebmt.org.