Eligibility checklist

Is your department likely to be eligible for departmental accreditation? Spend a few moments completing the following questions as an initial check. You can print the results as a report to help target resources, focus your energy and convince your managers.

Question

Yes

No
We have minimum standards and a list of indications for TTE  
Our routine requests are triaged  
We have patient information sheets  
Our routine straightforward TTE reports are issued on the same day  
Clinical staff are available to provide urgent advice when necessary  
Our oldest echo machine (including major upgrades) is less than 10 years old  
Our department provides all echocardiographers with sufficient time and resources to perform CPD activity to BSE reaccreditation level  
My department has a cardiologist as the clinical lead who does hands on TTE/TOE/stress echo for one session per week per 3000 echoes per year performed in our department and is available for clinical advice, teaching, case reviews and triaging  
My department has a technical lead banded at agenda for change band 7 or higher with BSE individual accreditation. The technical lead spends at least half the week on echo related activity.  
We have dedicated echo rooms which large enough to for us to practice safely  

President's message

BSE departmental accreditation establishes standards for echocardiography services. It is already raising the quality of echocardiography in a similar way to that achieved by the BSE individual accreditation processes. The British Heart Foundation shares our aim of improving echocardiography in the UK and has provided a generous grant to develop the online departmental accreditation application process. We are very grateful for their ongoing support.

President Navroz Masani
Vice President Helen Rimington

What is Departmental Accreditation and how to apply?

Quality matters!

BSE departmental accreditation is a recognised benchmark of quality. It indicates to patients, resource allocators and health professionals that an echo department meets realistic quality standards.

Accreditation is for all echo departments, not just those that are large or highly specialised. It is offered at two levels: standard and advanced. Standard level represents what BSE considers a minimum standard echocardiography service and should be achieved by every echo department in the UK. The targets are 'sensible' and are not a set of unachievable hoops to jump through. Advanced level signifies an excellent service and it can be achieved by both district and tertiary hospitals.

Accreditation covers four areas, transthoracic echo, transoesophageal echo, stress echo and training.  Standard transthoracic echo is a prerequisite for the other accreditations.  There is a fixed fee of £500 whether you apply for one or more areas of accreditation.

The online application process incorporates links that can help with your application such as relevant BSE documents and an eligibility check tool allows you to test whether your department qualifies before submitting an application - View the application process.

Following your application for accreditation your department will be inspected by a small team of senior cardiologists and physiologists. If your department does not reach the required standards you will get a clear set of reasons and suggestions for how to achieve them.

Departmental accreditation is about to get a whole lot more vibrant with new online benefits for accredited centres such as downloadable cases and a quality assurance programme, so watch this space!

Join with the BSE in improving the national standard of echocardiography. Check out departmental accreditation!

Expression of Interest

To start the departmental accreditation process please register here. This does not commit you to applying for departmental accreditation and you do not need to pay anything at this stage. The BSE will be notified of your interest and will issue your department with a login and password so that you can progress to the next stage of the application process. Usually the technical or clinical head initiates this process but any member of staff can apply if they have the agreement of their department leads. The technical and clinical leads (and the applicant if different) will receive email acknowledgement of the application. A department can only have one active expression of interest at any time and each department will receive only one login and password.