Frequently asked questions

How would patients benefit from a hospital being IASIOS Accredited?

• The Accreditation enhances patient safety and satisfaction and therefore certifies a high quality of patient care.
• Strengthens patient-doctor relationship as it encourages practitioner involvement throughout the entirety of the patient care pathway
• Increases awareness, recognition and accessibility of Interventional Oncology to patients

What are the advantages to becoming an IASIOS Accredited Hospital?

• Offers and builds a system of quantifiable benchmarks for the quality and patient safety
• Be recognised as a pioneer in the field – recognition for being among the first facilities in the world with an International, IO-specific accreditation
• Supports funding and reduces costs

How would an IASIOS Accreditation help the growth and development of IO

• Supports the global community of Interventional Oncologists
• Supports the establishment of O as a separate clinical discipline within your department and in general worldwide
• Improves worldwide standards of care and helps set a gold standard for IO services
• Supports interdisciplinary understanding and communication

Our Accredited Centres share their experiences and discuss some the unique benefits they gained since becoming an IASIOS accredited facility. Read more about them here: Testimonials.

Facilities are required to perform a minimum of 150 therapeutic interventional oncology procedures per year. This includes ablations, radioembolisation, chemoembolisation, pain management, musculoskeletal interventions, other vascular oncology procedures and other therapeutic procedures in cancer care.

Please refer to the CIRSE Standards of QA, to familiarise yourself with all the IASIOS criteria. If you would like a detailed checklist of the core requirements, please contact the IASIOS team.

There are no requirements regarding the size of the department or facility. IASIOS welcomes applications from both private and public centres, and from all regions.

If you have any questions regarding your facility’s eligibility, please get in touch with the IASIOS team.

The first steps for enrolling in IASIOS vary slightly from country to country and hospital to hospital. Depending on the system you have in your institution, you may have to discuss IASIOS with your department head, hospital quality assurance department, or hospital administration. You can find detailed information under our Accreditation section and materials to help you facilitate the discussion in our Marketing Materials section

Once the necessary funding, manpower and approval is obtained, please register your facility here

If you are interested in enrolling your facility but are unsure of how to proceed, please feel free to email the IASIOS Team if you would like to set up a teleconference or if you have any questions.

We have some useful information on our website that you can use to approach your team, department and hospital administration regarding IASIOS accreditation. We recommend outlining the benefits of getting accredited as well as the unique opportunity provided to bring your IO service line to a higher standard. The Standards of Quality Assurance in Interventional Oncology offer support in a clear and defined manner that you can use to highlight areas of improvement for your service line. If you are asked to have a more formal presentation, we have prepared a PowerPoint slideshow that you may find helpful. If there are any additional materials you might need or questions that you would like to have answered, please don’t hesitate to contact the IASIOS office.

Step 1: As a first step, we suggest you check your facility’s accreditations for other departments. This can help establish a precedent that the hospital is open to certifying that its centres operate with the highest standards of care. By doing this, you can demonstrate that your department can also be a centre of excellence within the hospital and one of the only leading centres in the world accredited in interventional oncology.

Step 2: Set up a meeting with your Quality Assurance department to review the requirements. Sometimes the obstacle to enrolment is the work involved or the lack of a coordinator for the project. Some IASIOS Accredited Centres have had the accreditation paid for by the QA funds and led by a QA project manager. They may be able to give you advice on what has worked for getting other accreditations approved in the past, have access to special funds for accreditation programmes, or may be able to assist you in approaching administration or help advocate on your behalf for why the accreditation will benefit the hospital.

Step 3: Your oncologists can support your request if you have a close working relationship with them. Explain to them that IASIOS is about you evaluating, improving, standardising and finally certifying your entire patient pathway from beginning to end in accordance with the CIRSE Standards for Quality Assurance in IO. This increases trust and safety for patients and oncologists alike and leads to more patient referrals to the hospitals.

Step 4: We recommend scheduling a meeting with your chief of department or hospital administration to present your proposal. It would be helpful if you were prepared to discuss the purpose of IASIOS, why it is needed, how it will improve your service line, and how it will benefit your hospital and make you stand out worldwide. You should be ready to explain what makes it different from the accreditations the hospital already has, the fees, and the work and staff that will be required. The IASIOS team has prepared a presentation to help you communicate with your administration. You can download it here!

Depending on the facility, it may take some time for administrative approval to be finalised, funding to be granted and manpower or other resources to be allocated. In our experience, every facility needs to make some changes or updates to their policies in order to achieve the requirements laid out in the Standards of Quality Assurance in Interventional Oncology. Please keep in mind that to become an IASIOS Accredited Centre, you are not required to meet every evidence requirement listed in the Standards of QA in IO. Only core requirements need to be fulfilled in order to be granted accreditation. Our website lists which evidence requirements from the Standards of QA in IO are core and which are extended. Using this information, facilities can start evaluating their current standing as well as implement any necessary improvements if they would like to get a jumpstart on their IASIOS Accreditation.

No. Most of our hospitals are not English speaking, and the evidence is not submitted upfront. Only specific evidence that is requested by the assessors during their evaluation is submitted.

In our experience, it is best to have 3 or more individuals collaborating on the application as a team. We strongly recommend having a member from the hospital’s quality assurance department in addition to interventional radiologists, nurses and/or administrative staff as appropriate for your facility. Our accredited facilities have reported between 30-40 hours man-hours working on the application, spread out over the span of several months.

Hospitals enrolled in IASIOS will have surveys and benchmarking opportunities as part of their annual benefits programme. Please click here for more details about the annual benefits programme.

Please note that data and benchmarking from IASIOS hospitals is not made public. Our main goal is to help facilities improve their overall standards of care.

During the accreditation evaluation, IASIOS Assessors may recommend a facility undergoes an audit of their IO service line. The recommendation will only happen in cases where IASIOS Assessors require further evidence. In order to gain accreditation, the centre will need to adequately satisfy the audit criteria.

There are two type of audits that may be recommended: either a remote audit or on-site.

• What does a Remote Audit entail?

Where a facility is required to provide further evidence of their compliance to the CIRSE Standards of QA in IO, IASIOS assessors may recommend a Remote Audit. The purpose of this audit is to clarify minor details within the submitted application.

As a rule of thumb, we strongly recommend that every enrolled centre prepares for the possibility of undergoing a remote audit.

• What does an On-site Audit entail?

Where a more thorough clarification of the submitted application is required, an On-site Audit may be recommended. Please note, however, that this recommendation will only be made in exceptional circumstances, where additional evidence submitted, a remote audit and/or a corrective action plan (CAP) have failed to sufficiently demonstrate compliance to the required criteria.

As this is an additional service, the Enrolled Centre will be notified well in advance and IASIOS will provide a cost and time estimate.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact the IASIOS team.

The time that it takes a facility to complete their application is highly variable and reflects the unique situation at each hospital. In our experience this may take from as little as 3 months to 2 years. A facility can remain enrolled for as long they need to make improvements in order to meet all the core criteria in the Standards of Quality Assurance. The main goal of IASIOS is not to make a judgement of the facility at the time of enrolment, but to offer help and support for facilities wanting to increase their quality of care. After a facility has submitted their application, as well as any additional evidence requested by the assessors, they can expect to receive their official accreditation within 8-12 weeks.

We understand and appreciate that each facility will be facing unique challenges in meeting all of the core requirements, and that some facilities may require extensive policy changes which can take some time to implement. Our main goal with IASIOS is for each facility to improve their service line as necessary. Therefore, while we recommend that facilities aim for around 12 months to turn in their application, we have no formal time constraints for facilities that may require more time.

We ask that all facilities go through the supporting evidence checklist that is provided with their application packet in order to ensure that they are able to meet all core requirements and that they have evidence ready at their disposal to demonstrate compliance.

There are two possible outcomes from an unsuccessful accreditation decision: Deferred or Denied. If the accreditation is Deferred, the facility will receive a detailed report outlining what is required to achieve Accredited Centre Status. The facility has 90 days to submit a Corrective Action Plan (CAP), with the option of requesting consultation. Upon submission, assessors may request evidence of the implementation.

If accreditation is Denied, the facility has 90 days to submit a proposal or CAP, with the option of requesting consultation and must also schedule an on-site audit.

In both cases, the hospital maintains their Enrolled Centre status until Accredited Centre status is approved.

Hospitals that achieve accreditation are displayed on the website and on our social media channels and other promotions. Rankings or comparisons of any nature among other IASIOS hospitals are never done publicly.

Applications that received a deferred or denied assessment result will remain IASIOS Enrolled Centres publicly and officially while the hospital works in collaboration with the IASIOS team to implement a Corrective Action Plan that will assist them increasing their quality of care until they can meet the core criteria and achieve an IASIOS Accredited Centre status.

The annual fee grants IASIOS Centres automatic access to our Benefits Programme. The exclusive programme includes:

• IASIOS seminars and meetings focused on career and professional development
• Exclusive networking events and mentorship opportunities to grow connections between the global community of IOs
• In addition to existing conferences and IO courses, IASIOS will provide learning and training opportunities for centres preparing to undergo accreditation
• Promotion and recognition of your hospital, department, and IO service line through IASIOS channels and partners
• The exclusive opportunity to survey data and compare standards with other IASIOS enrolled centres, through survey and benchmarking services

Please refer to our Benefits Programme section for more information.

As the IASIOS community grows, we plan to roll out the programme in stages. Follow our social media channels to keep up to date with all developments!

The IASIOS Accreditation is intended for the service line and the patient pathway itself. Therefore, an accreditation can be valid for multiple location at once, but only if the following positions are filled by the same individuals and if they control the service for all sites:

• Clinical Director of Radiology
• Head of IR
• Chief Nurse for IR or Radiology
• Head Radiographer

However, if these vary from location to location then each facility must apply separately.

All therapeutic interventional procedures and pain palliative procedures, for example:

1. Tumor ablation
2. Chemoembolisation
3. Radioembolisation
4. Hepatic arterial infusion/Bland embolisation
5. Neurolysis
6. Bone and spine augmentation techniques for malignancies

Other procedures that can be reported:
PICC lines, Port implantation
Biliary drainage for malignancies
Nephrostomies/ureteral stents for malignancies