The Q-Day - a success story

In the interview, Stephanie Fasnacht talks about a virtual event with more than 200 people that she set up with the help of Kilchenmann.

Stephanie Fasnacht is assistant to the management of ANQ, the national association for quality development in hospitals and clinics. This association is responsible for uniform quality measurements in the institutions of actusomatics, psychiatry and rehabilitation at the national level. ANQ members are the hospital association H+, the associations of insurers santésuisse, curafutura and the federal social insurers, the cantons and the Principality of Liechtenstein. In the interview, Stephanie Fasnacht talks about a virtual event with more than 200 people that she set up with the help of Kilchenmann. She talks about the planning and implementation of the Q-Day and about the complexity that such a large-scale project entails.

Ms Fasnacht, what is the Q-Day all about?

Every two years, the ANQ organises an expert symposium, the so-called Q-Day. The aim of this event is to increase the exchange of experience on quality development around the ANQ measurements in the inpatient sector of the healthcare system. Among other things, quality managers from acute hospitals, psychiatric and rehabilitation clinics will share their best practices through expert contributions and presentations. The day offers input presentations, parallel workshops, a panel discussion on current topics and a keynote speech - all this in German, French and Italian. When we started planning Q-Day 2022 in January 2021, events were held online due to the pandemic. Because planning security was important to us and because we wanted to use the advantages of online events, we decided even then to hold the Q-Day in January 2022 virtually. Kilchenmann supported us significantly in this.

Sounds like a big project. How did you get started?

First and foremost, we wanted to get an overview of how such a virtual event could run and what the technical possibilities were. That's why Kilchenmann held a kick-off workshop with us in March 2021, which then formed the basis for the Q-Day. The idea was now to set up a platform with various virtual rooms where, in addition to common parts such as the welcome or farewell, various workshops could also take place in parallel. The participants should be able to move freely between the rooms online, but at the same time their participation had to be traceable for the awarding of continuing education credits. We wanted to stream the various programme points from different studios and event locations, with speakers, moderators, interpreters and technical staff on site.

What planning steps were subsequently necessary?

Internally, after the kick-off, we worked for several months on organisational aspects such as planning the daily programme and requesting speakers and interpreters. With Kilchenmann and their partner Appix, we clarified content-related and technical questions about the event platform: What should it look like, who can do what on the event platform? For example, we also wanted a support hotline to help participants with any problems. Kilchenmann was able to manage this in German and English, which was practical. In general, we were very grateful for the company's all-round offer, because Kilchenmann supported us not only with the creation of the platform and the hotline support, but also with the search for possible studios and event locations as well as the organisation of the catering.

What difficulties did you encounter during the project?

In addition to the general complexity of the project and the resulting need for good communication between all partners, we had to reschedule one month before the event due to the pandemic. We decided that the speakers, most of whom work in hospitals and clinics, should only present remotely. This meant that only the moderators, interpreters and the technical team were on site. This change at short notice required a lot of flexibility on all sides and we were very happy that Kilchenmann always supported us actively even in such moments.

What did the implementation on Q-Day finally look like?

After a trial run, during which the people on site could familiarise themselves with the technology, the event started at 9:00 a.m., which went smoothly and to our complete satisfaction thanks to the event platform and its various functions. The participants were able to ask questions in writing during the events, which were played directly on the tablets and screens of the moderators and speakers. In this way, they were able to take up the questions in a targeted manner and answer them orally right away. All contributions were coherently integrated into the virtual event platform - the participants received a uniform overall impression and probably did not even notice the local differences between the remote connection and the studio recording. The language was preset according to the participants' choice, but could easily be changed. Kilchenmann was in charge of the technical hotline, so any problems were quickly solved. The event was also recorded and the contributions can now be viewed on the event platform for another year. We received very positive feedback from the participants after the event. So we are very satisfied and can well imagine holding similar online events in the future.

What did you particularly appreciate about working with Kilchenmann?

We were very happy that Kilchenmann supported us with our event on various levels. It made our work much easier that we not only knew that the technical aspects were in good hands, but that we also received help with the studio and room search and with the catering. Thanks to the close and good cooperation, we were able to implement the individual steps according to schedule, even with last-minute changes. Kilchenmann also always responded professionally to our needs and always remained flexible. At this point, a big thank you to Stephan Zuchold, André Steinbach from Kilchenmann and Dominique Leibundgut from Kilchenmann's partner Appix.

Ms Fasnacht, thank you for the interview.

Click here for the recording of this year's Q-Day. This was broadcast as a livestream from the studios on the Novartis Campus in Basel.

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