Q-Day - a success story

In this interview, Stephanie Fasnacht talks about a virtual event with more than 200 people that she organized 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 standardized quality measurements in actusomatic, psychiatric and rehabilitation institutions at a 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 this interview, Stephanie Fasnacht talks about a virtual event with more than 200 people that she organized with the help of Kilchenmann. She talks about the planning and implementation of Q-Day and the complexity of such a large-scale project.

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

Every two years, the ANQ organizes a specialist symposium, the so-called Q-Day. The aim of this event is to increase the exchange of experience on quality development relating to ANQ measurements in the inpatient sector of the healthcare system. Quality managers from acute hospitals, psychiatric and rehabilitation clinics, among others, will pass on their best practices through specialist contributions and presentations. The day offers input presentations, parallel workshops, a panel discussion on current topics and a keynote speech - all in German, French and Italian. When we started planning Q-Day 2022 in January 2021, events were taking place online due to the pandemic. Because planning security was important to us and because we wanted to take advantage of the benefits of online events, we decided back then to hold Q-Day virtually in January 2022. Kilchenmann provided us with significant support 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 take place and what technical possibilities exist. 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 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. Participants should be able to move freely between the rooms online, while at the same time their participation had to be traceable for the awarding of continuing education credits. We wanted to stream the various program items from different studios and event locations, with speakers, moderators, interpreters and the technical staff on site.

What planning steps were subsequently necessary?

Internally, we spent several months after the kick-off dealing with organizational aspects such as planning the day's programme and requesting speakers and interpreters. Together 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 they might have. Kilchenmann was able to manage this itself in German and English, which was practical. In general, we were very grateful for the company's all-round service, because Kilchenmann not only helped us create the platform and provide hotline support, but also helped us find possible studios and event locations and organize 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 again a 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 moderators, interpreters and the technical team would be on site. This last-minute change required a great deal of flexibility on all sides and we were very pleased that Kilchenmann always provided us with active support, even at times like this.

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

After a trial run, during which the people on site were able to familiarize themselves with the technology, the event got underway at 9:00 a.m., which ran smoothly and to our complete satisfaction thanks to the event platform and its various functions. Participants were able to ask questions in writing during the events, which were played directly onto the tablets and screens of the moderators and speakers. This allowed them to take up the questions in a targeted manner and answer them verbally straight away. All contributions were coherently integrated into the virtual event platform - the participants received a uniform overall impression and probably did not really notice the local differences between remote connection and studio recording. The language was already preset according to the participants' choice, but could easily be changed. Kilchenmann looked after the technical hotline, which meant that any problems were quickly resolved. 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. We are therefore 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 at various levels during our event. It made our work much easier that we not only knew that the technical aspects were in good hands, but also that we had help with finding a studio and room 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 remained flexible at all times. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Stephan Zuchold, André Steinbach from Kilchenmann and Dominique Leibundgut from Kilchenmann's partner Appix.

Ms. Fasnacht, thank you for the interview.

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