Abstract
BackgroundAlthough a modest body of literature exists on accreditation, little research was conducted on the impact of accreditation on primary healthcare organizations in the Middle East. This study assessed the changes resulting from the integration of Accreditation Canada International’s accreditation program in a primary healthcare organization in the State of Qatar.MethodsThe study investigated how accreditation helped introduce organizational changes through promoting organizational learning as well as quality improvement initiatives. Applying a quantitative design, a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 500 staff. The study used Spearman’s correlation coefficient to analyze the collected survey data.ResultsOverall employees agreed on the positive impact of accreditation. The results showed a significantly positive correlation between staff perception of accreditation and of quality of care. The two dominant cultures at Primary Health Care Corporation were “group” (with a score of 28.61) and “hierarchical” (with a score of 26.59). The results showed a positive correlation between staff perception of accreditation and their perception of culture type whenever the culture was identified as “group”.ConclusionsThis study provided much-needed insight on the possible changes that organizations might go through in relation to quality improvement and organizational learning.
Highlights
A modest body of literature exists on accreditation, little research was conducted on the impact of accreditation on primary healthcare organizations in the Middle East
(c) they saw the benefit of accreditation in improving the quality of care, in the values shared in the organization, as well as in the use of internal resources. (d) They were confident in accreditation’s positive impact on addressing issues brought in by external factors like population needs and working with external stakeholders
Findings added to the body of literature that the positive impact of accreditation in relation to quality improvement and organizational learning was definite in a primary care setting, since most of the evidence found in current literature related to acute care settings
Summary
A modest body of literature exists on accreditation, little research was conducted on the impact of accreditation on primary healthcare organizations in the Middle East. This study assessed the changes resulting from the integration of Accreditation Canada International’s accreditation program in a primary healthcare organization in the State of Qatar. Accreditation has been widely used as a means to improve quality in secondary and tertiary care, its presence in primary care is limited [1]. This is evident in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). In Canada for instance, primary care-specific accreditation standards were developed [2]. Accreditation of primary care settings was shown to strengthen quality control and improvement [3].
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