Consultation 022

This consultation closed on April 22, 2022. 

About the consultation

CPSA issued the Reprocessing Medical Equipment and the Medical Services Requiring Accreditation Outside of Hospitals standards in January 2010. As the technology for medical equipment has improved significantly and other similar standards have come into effect since these two standards were published, CPSA sees the need to revisit the standards to meet the current medical landscape in Alberta.

The current Reprocessing Medical Equipment standard requires physicians to follow directions given by CPSA’s Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) Committee and ensure all reprocessed medical equipment is properly cleaned, disinfected and sterilized to manufacturer and CPSA standards.

The current Medical Services Requiring Accreditation Outside of Hospitals standard requires that physicians have approval to perform or supervise a diagnostic or treatment procedure and must obtain Registrar approval prior to performing acupuncture or hair transplantation. CPSA is the only regulator in Canada, other than the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan, with an approval process for acupuncture.

The following proposed amendments were approved by CPSA Council for consultation at their March meeting.

Reprocessing Medical Equipment

• Rename Infection Prevention and Control to address broadening of standard and to indicate the content of the standard
  • The current standard only addresses one subset of IPAC’s standards (Medical Device Reprocessing)
• Call attention to the General Standards and, in particular, the new section on single-use medical devices (Part A)
• Clarify that the standard applies to all regulated members and their responsibility to prevent the potential spread of infection in clinical settings
• Add requirement for all regulated members to practice in accordance with all Infection Prevention and Control General Standards
• Clarify the requirement for using reprocessed medical devices in a non-hospital setting and extend to unaccredited facilities (e.g., community clinics)
• Add more requirements

NOTE: Concurrent work is being done to rename the IPAC General Standards and Medical Device Reprocessing Standards to differentiate them from the standard of practice.

Medical Services Requiring Accreditation Outside of Hospitals

• Rescind the Medical Services Requiring Accreditation Outside of Hospitals standard:
  • Medical Services Requiring Accreditation Outside of Hospitals is addressed by the Non-Hospital Surgical Facilities Accreditation standard, making the standard of practice redundant.
  • Remove the acupuncture approval requirement —acupuncture is no longer considered an alternative treatment and the risk to the public is minimal.
  • Remove hair transplantation — hair transplantation is the only aesthetic procedure that currently requires approval