Organisation 2021
General Assembly of Members
The General Assembly of Members in May was held virtually due to the pandemic. In the statutory component of the proceedings, the delegates approved the annual financial statement for 2020, discharged the board and the board of control, confirmed Treuhand Lehmann AG as the board of control, approved the annual report for 2020 and adopted the amendment to the statutes on representation of service providers on the board. Consequently, the service providers now only have three representatives on the ANQ board. However, they still represent six votes, maintaining the parity of votes between service providers and funders (insurers and cantons).
As a result of the amendments to the statutes, four former representatives of H+ – Dr. med. Stefan Götz, Prof. Dr. med. Marcel Jakob, Prof. Dr. med. Wolfram Kawohl and Dr. med. Ivo Spicher – resigned from the board. The Federal Office of Public Health relinquished its observer status on the board and in the General Assembly of Members, explaining why its representative Therese Grolimund did not stand for re-election. Additionally, Christoph Franck, as ANQ Vice-President and representative of the cantons, announced his resignation from the board.
The General Assembly of Members elected new members to the ANQ board: Anne-Geneviève Bütikofer as delegate of H+ and Seraina Grünig as delegate of the cantons. The current members of the board – Miriam Baldi, Martine Birrer, Dr. Renata Josi, Dr. Felix Roth, Dr. Gianni Roberto Rossi, Thomas Straubhaar and Dr. med. Danuta Zemp – were re-elected during the general re-election proceedings. The assembly confirmed Thomas Straubhaar as President and elected Martine Birrer as Vice-President.
The November General Assembly of Members was conducted both online and on-site in Olten. Online representation proved popular, and a large number of members attended virtually. The General Assembly of Members adopted the 2022 budget and confirmed the membership fees.
Board
In 2021, the board met for six regular meetings, three of which were held online and three were mixed onsite/online sessions. Beyond this, an online extraordinary meeting was held in November, and members attended a two-day summer retreat in Thun.
In addition to the review-specific topics relating to all departments, the board dealt mainly with the following agenda items during the scheduled meetings:
Resolutions
- Approval of funds for the IT upgrades at the administrative office
- Approval of the funds to develop the online platform ReMoS in the rehabilitation department
- Abandonment of the transparent publication in 2022 of potentially avoidable readmissions (BFS data from 2020) owing to the change in methodology
Approvals
- Updated two-year assignments for the QC Acute Care and the QC Prevalence Review
- Annual Financial Statement 2020, Annual Report 2020, amendment to ANQ’s statutes and election of the designated delegates of the members of the association for submission to the General Assembly of Members
- Budget framework conditions for 2022
- The 2022 budget for submission to the General Assembly
- Results of the discussions at the summer retreat
- Fundamental documents and regulations relating to the new ANQ services in the area of quality improvement for submission to the contracting parties of the ANQ National Quality Agreement of March 9th 2011 (scope statement of the joint committees of the board, competence matrix, financing system)
Elections
- Election of board members Martine Birrer and Dr. Gianni Roberto Rossi to the finance committee to replace resigning board members Prof. Dr. Bernhard Güntert and Dr. Ivo Spicher
- Elections of replacement members of the QC of ANQ
Discussions and information
- Potential of ANQ reviews to be used for additional reviews
- Summarising the annual media analysis
- Preparation and discussion of the thematic framework of the summer retreat
At the summer retreat, the board considered the role and tasks of ANQ as coordinator of the implementation of Art. 58a para. 2 KVG. The starting point for these considerations were what members, as represented, expected of ANQ and what the negotiating delegation of the quality agreement partners as per Art. 58a KVG had in mind regarding collaboration with ANQ in the future. The retreat revealed how the future of ANQ might look under Art. 58a KVG and how the existing structures could be used.
At the extraordinary meeting in November, the board discussed and formulated the role of ANQ and the new tasks associated with this role. The scheduled meeting in November was used to adopt the results for submission to the members of the association and the contracting parties of the ANQ National Quality Agreement.
Executive Work Groups
- The finance committee looked at the preparation of the 2021 Annual Financial Statement and the 2022 budget. The committee was in regular contact with the administrative office on the subject of the quarterly forecast.
Administrative office
In addition to its routine activities, the administrative office also oversaw various special projects. These dealt, among other things, with the effects of the KVG reforms on ANQ, with the cooperation between the ANQ committees and the quality contract partners as per Art. 58a KVG, and with the quality strategy and the four-year goals of the federal government.
In 2021, ANQ started creating infographics for selected review results and publishing them along with the results. The graphics are a concise and comprehensive supplement to the extensive information available in the National Comparison Reports, the summaries and on the ANQ web portal.
Change was in the air in the area of IT: the administrative office introduced a new IT environment and a new CRM solution. In addition, the online platform ReMoS for rehabilitation was developed, online training formats were designed and work on the data warehouse was continued. Diverse improvements were made to the ANQ web portal, for example those relating to the infographics. In addition, a dedicated sub-page was created for the online profiles featuring in the annual reports.
Hardly any presentations took place in the year under review due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, planning for Q-Day 2022 was also more challenging than usually. The ANQ symposium was conceived as a virtual event from the outset. However, the original plan was to livestream the event from Basel. This was adapted in December to allow speakers to join from their workplace or from home.
The administrative office participated in a seminar on body language. The discussions on status quo with staff focused on the KVG reforms and the changes these will bring for ANQ.
In 2021, two ANQ staff members celebrated their tenth anniversary: both Regula Heller, head of acute care and deputy director, and Roger Huber, staff member of the secretary’s office, commenced working at the administrative office in 2011. Dr. Johanna Friedli departed ANQ at the end of May. Stefan Nydegger succeeded her as head of the psychiatry department in July. In June, Linda Hadorn joined the team as project manager for quality reviews. She will supervise the pilot reviews of outpatient acute care in hospitals and intermediate outpatient psychiatry in clinics.