Echelon classification

Echelon Classification within HOVON: Optimizing the performance of patient-related studies

Conducting trials places high demands on participating hospitals, specialists and the HOVON organization. This increases the quality and the reliability of the results.

In order to guarantee the quality of trials, it is necessary to know which hospital can participate in which trial.

All sites in the Netherlands have an study echelon classification on the basis of their infrastructure. The criteria are periodically checked and adjusted if necessary. This is different from the care echelon as assigned by the NVvH. Details can be found in the HOVON policy “echelon classification”.

At the section Hospitals, the (HOVON) study echelon level for each site is shown.

Echelon classification of HOVON participants

For allogeneic and autologous stem cell transplants there is a licensing system from VWS, based on criteria of the Health Council (Hemapoietic stem cells; Health Council, 10-09-2003). These criteria, partly modified, can be used to define "intensive care" echelons. In addition, there will be hospitals that are able to participate in "non-intensive care" trials. Such an echelon classification of hemato-oncological care in hospitals fits well with the HOVON hospital-specific monitoring and is in harmony with future proposals from the NVvH for echelon classification of the (entire) hematological care and education.

The transplant echelon centers are JACIE accredited. In addition, the echelon criteria are checked/evaluated during monitoring visits.

The classification and criteria of the echelons are described in the HOVON policy “echelon classification” (please find them at our policy section – after log in). There are 5 echelon levels:

Level A, hospitals in possession of a permit for allogeneic and autologous stem cell transplants
Level B, hospitals in possession of a permit for autologous (but not allogeneic) stem cell transplantation
Level C-HIC, hospitals that can provide intensive hematological care, such as acute leukemia treatment
Level C-SCT, hospitals that can provide aftercare after autologous stem cell transplants
Level D, hospitals that can provide non-intensive hematological care, without long-term and / or deep pancytopenia

A center may qualify for classification in both Level C-HIC and Level C-SCT if both sets of criteria are met.