The Bermuda Hospitals Board could be weeks away from receiving a Canadian accreditation, announced Health Minister Zane DeSilva yesterday.Speaking in the House of Assembly, he told MPs that the BHB had undergone a hospital-wide accreditation survey with Accreditation Canada last week.He said five experienced surveyors spent a week at all of the Board’s facilities: including King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute and Lamb Foggo Urgent Care Centre.They reviewed the services, governance and strategic direction of each facility, in addition to its ability to meet current and future community needs, said Mr DeSilva.One part of the testing was known as ‘tracer methodology’ which saw the surveyors pull a medical record from the system and follow that patient’s journey through the hospital to check for evidence that all correct standards were applied.Mr DeSilva said the BHB was still “some weeks away from a formal result and final report from Accreditation Canada”.But said written feedback left by the surveyors stated the Board’s commitment to quality improvement and patient safety was “extraordinary” and its preparation for the accreditation process had been “excellent”.“Going through the survey gives both the BHB and the Bermuda community a snapshot of where we are now, but it is not an end result,” said Mr DeSilva.“It is, if anything, a point from which the BHB learns and grows a stop in the journey where we can take stock of where we are and plan our next steps.“With this in mind, there are still areas of improvement the surveyors have helped the Board identify. But with 97.7 percent of the 2,554 applicable criteria met, I would like to publicly congratulate the BHB on its achievement and its commitment to being independently surveyed for the good of the entire community.”