As our centres were dealing with the COVID-19 situation, OECI decided in March to postpone all planned site visits until Autumn 2020. In the past weeks the OECI A&D Board has investigated alternatives to start up the A&D Programme, which protect health professionals, patients and the OECI auditors and co-ordinators. .

In September 2020 the OECI A&D Programme will continue with hybrid virtual peer reviews. This means that a team of two local auditors (from the same country as the centre) will be present at the hospital location to visit mainly clinical departments, such as the ambulatory day care unit, the wards and two Multidisciplinary Team meetings. 2-3 auditors and the co-ordinator will be present at other interviews via videoconferencing. A hybrid virtual peer review is only available for centres in a re-accreditation process.

The co-ordination team will contact the centres in the re-accreditation process and work with them to organise the peer review. A format for the peer review visit has been prepared, and a manual will be provided to the auditors and centres.

Centres that are in first cycle of the A&D Process are advised to continue. The peer review visits will be organised on site, carefully considering the safety of our audit team and the centre’s staff and patients, and the local regulations concerning Covid-19 at that time.