Staff at the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Audiology Centre (QEHAC) are rejoicing following a major “coup” after its services were awarded national accreditation.

The centre, which moved from Selly Oak to the QEHB site in Edgbaston last December, has become the first audiology service in the West Midlands to receive the award from the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS).

Only five other Audiology providers in the country have been granted UKAS accreditation, which is awarded under the Improving Quality in Physiological Sciences (IQIPS) standard.

Accreditation was conferred following a two day visit to the Birmingham audiology centre by a team of inspectors on August 1 and 2.

Dr Huw Cooper, Consultant Clinical Scientist (Audiology), said: “We are enormously proud of the service, which has become the first audiology service in the West Midlands to get accreditation.

“Overall, UKAS were very impressed by the high quality of our service, so it is a great coup for us to be accredited. We have attained accreditation for all that we do, including both our routine hearing aid service as well as our more complex work with balance patients, tinnitus, and cochlear implants.

“We were given six minor recommendations based on observations by the assessment team, but these are easily dealt with.”

Dr Cooper said the Audiology team had been collecting evidence and documentation for up to nine months which was then submitted to UKAS prior to the inspection. Accreditation is valid for four years before requiring renewal.

“It is essential that Audiology departments get UKAS accreditation. It is similar to a British Kite mark for industry as it demonstrates that you meet a high standard and shows you are ahead of other people in the same area.

“And it means that private competitors cannot remain as a qualified provider of audiology without this accreditation.

“We are proud that we got there first in the West Midlands, in line with QEHB being the premier provider of services in the area.”

He said the accreditation was the result of a team effort, led by Chief Audiologist Clare Munro, who was asked to head up the project.

“We moved to our new centre in Nuffield House last December, so the brand new physical environment obviously helped. The facilities here, such as soundproofing, are of a very high standard, so it would have been much harder to get accreditation if we had still been in Selly Oak in outdated facilities.

“The UKAS assessors were inspecting the professionalism of the staff and the quality of the service, and as our recent patient survey shows, we do listen to what patients tell us.”

The survey revealed that 99 per cent of patients surveyed were “likely or extremely likely” to recommend the Audiology Centre to friends or family, while 85 per cent rated the care they received as “excellent” or “very good”.