Beyond Accreditation: Issues in Healthcare Quality

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the last few years, there is an increased interest among Indian Healthcare institutions to get accredited from bodies, such as national accreditation board for hospitals and healthcare providers (NABH), Joint Commission International (JCI), Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), and college of american pathologists Laboratory accreditation programme (CAP), etc. Hospital administrators, clinicians, academicians, promoters of the hospitals, policy makers and even government feel that accreditation is a panacea for all the problems associated with healthcare quality. But with the incidence of fire in one of the NABH accredited hospital in a metropolitan city, questions began to be asked on the correlation between quality and accreditation. Most of the hospitals use accreditation as a promotional tool, rather than a tool for continuous quality improvement. Often the entire focus of quality in a hospital is confined to the process of accreditation and re-accreditation. Time has come to think on the entire process of accreditation of hospitals in India, though it has a history of less than a decade. This paper intends to discuss various issues of quality in hospitals, outside the realms of accreditation. Need for strengthening and re-engineering the accreditation is also discussed. Accreditation essentially identifies the capability of the hospital to deliver quality care. It does not assure that hospitals delivers quality care. This aspect of accreditation has been often forgotten by the various stakeholders in healthcare. In this paper, an attempt is made to discuss other issues of quality, such as spurious drugs, quality of biomaterials, such as stents and biomedical equipments, quality of human resources, etc. which are often neglected by health institutions in its obsession to accreditation. How to cite this article Ikbal F. Beyond Accreditation: Issues in Healthcare Quality. Int J Res Foundation Hosp Healthc Adm 2015;3(1):1-4.