Challenges of the New Iranian Accreditation System Based on the Requirements of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua)

Abstract

Objective: Nowadays, successful health systems in the world have focused their attention on performance indicators, particularly on quality indicators. Given that accreditation is one of the main aspects of health system management and has a profound effect on these indicators, this study aimed to investigate challenges of Iranian accreditation system based on the requirements of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua). Methods : This was a qualitative study and its instrument was a checklist earlier published by ISQua. The researchers initially translated checklist and assessed its validity based on the opinions of 20 experts finally developing a checklist with 39 items to assess four main dimensions. Furthermore, the experts’ perspective was obtained and analyzed related to procurement of requirements in Iranian accreditation system and the results were reported in descriptive statistics. Results: The Iranian accreditation system had a variety of weaknesses in all dimensions such as the involuntary participation of health centers in accreditation process; the weak participation of clinicians in accreditation activities and performance improvement; management of the accreditation process by a governmental organization; the accreditation program is not conducted by a committee composed of main stakeholders; healthcare organizations do not provide suitable data of clinical practice, and hospital administrators do not have formal training in health management (with 100% agreement of Experts). But this system has strengths including; the government has approved the creation of the accreditation program (95% agreement); there is a professional organization for controlling the registration of medical practitioners and nurses nationally, and accreditation program has access to data collected routinely by health providers to the Ministry of Health (80% agreement). Conclusions: This study showed that the challenges facing the new accreditation system of the country are abundant and the successful implementation of this program requires serious monitoring to eliminate detected obstacles. Undoubtedly, the barriers identified and the recommendations presented in this study can be used as a guide to achieve this important.