Sant Pau - Campus Salut Barcelona, member of the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes
Sant Pau – Campus Salut Barcelona has become a member of the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) after presenting their candidature in the organisation's annual assembly in Athens, Greece, after being admitted by the institute's jury. The admission as a member of the OECI is a key step in the future accreditation as a comprehensive cancer centre.
The OECI is a non-profit organisation founded over 50 years ago consisting of more than 120 members, among which are some of the most prestigious European comprehensive cancer centres such as the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
“Being a member of this organisation is a step ahead in placing Sant Pau – Campus Salut Barcelona among the leading entities at the forefront of comprehensive cancer care”, explains Dr Adrià Comella, director of the Hospital Sant Pau, “and it also highlights our commitment to the quality, innovation and attention to cancer patients and their families, as well as the tasks carried out by our Campus professionals”. The centres forming part of the Campus Salut Barcelona are the Hospital Sant Pau, the Sant Pau Research Institute, the Fundació Puigvert, the Sant Pau Kālida Centre and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Self-evaluation before the start of a highly demanding auditing process
The Campus will now initiate a self-evaluation process to gain its accreditation as a comprehensive cancer centre based on a series of specific criteria established by the OECI in several areas ranging from a clear model of governance to the organisation of quality systems, patient participation and empowerment, multidiciplinary management, prevention and early cancer detection, direct provisioning of a wide array of high-quality diagnostics and treatments, research and teaching, and continuing education in oncology.
That will be followed by an external evaluation conducted by the OECI, which requires meeting both qualitative and quantitative standards (85) and sub-standards (343) in multidiciplinary comprehensive cancer care and research.
Sant Pau – Campus Salut Barcelona: differential aspects for a comprehensive approach
Assistance, research, teaching, innovation and humanism: Sant Pau – Campus Salut Barcelona is a centre combining five activity areas to offer top quality care.
In assistance, the Hospital Sant Pau is a leading hospital institute with cutting-edge facilities, a vocation for innovation and the ability to grow, aiming to guarantee the best results in health with the best patient experience and making relevant contributions to medical advances. In this sense, and particularly in the field of cancer, it is worth highlighting the strategic alliance with the Fundació Puigvert, the only hospital in Spain to receive the accreditation as a European Prostate Cancer Centre of Excellence (EPCCE) under the framework of the European Beating Cancer Plan.
In research, the experience of the groups of the Sant Pau Research Institute allow leading and developing translational research projects that, among other activities, include clinical trails and, therefore patient treatments. Here the Cellular Immunotherapy and Gene Therapy Group (GITC) directed by Dr Javier Briones, and the Advanced Therapies Unit stand out, in which Sant Pau is one of the leading centres in the world in the development and production of CAR-T: one of the only two authorised centres in Catalonia and one of the only 15 existing centres worldwide to produce these immunotherapy drugs.
In teaching, the Campus has included the Faculty of Medicine of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Sant Pau Univeristy School of Nursing for over 50 years; and in 1978 it became a member of the MIR Programme with 39 accredited specialities.
In the field of humanism, the Campus includes entities such as the Sant Pau Kālida Centre, unique in Spain and based on the experience of the international network of Maggie’s centres. The centre offers a space in which to psychologically and socially accompany cancer patients, carers and family members by providing comprehensive and free cancer support. It is strategically located next to the Hospital Sant Pau and is open to everyone, regardless of the hospital in which patients are being treated.