Promoting patients\u2019 rights through hospital accreditation

Carsten Engel

doi:10.1186/s13584-020-00421-1

Abstract

Legislation and accreditation standards both address patients’ rights. The two approaches differ in important ways; they should not be seen as competing but as complementing efforts. Laws define minimum standards, whereas accreditation standards describe optimal performance; laws focus on the rights, whereas accreditation standards also point out ways in which hospitals may act to deliver these rights, which both serves to help hospitals implementing the rights and to standardize the measures taken across hospitals. A recent Israeli study underpins this view, but also highlights that international accreditation standards and national legislation may differ, when it comes to the definition of the actual rights.

Highlights

Accreditation is widely used to promote and improve quality in hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations; often it is carried out under the umbrella of International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua)’s International Accreditation Programme [1]
Suppose that a country already has well-developed regulatory requirements for the provision of healthcare, what is the value of adding accreditation on top of this – and what frictions should we expect? Obviously, accreditation could serve as an outsourced form of inspection, i.e. as an external and independent evaluation of compliance with the regulatory requirements; accreditation bodies have the expertise to perform this type of evaluation
A potential source of friction is introduced, when an international set of standards is incorporated into the national legal framework, introducing new requirements and raising questions of whether failure to act as required by the accreditation standards could lead to legal action against a hospital

Summary

Introduction

Accreditation is widely used to promote and improve quality in hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations; often it is carried out under the umbrella of ISQua’s International Accreditation Programme [1]. Main text Accreditation is widely used to promote and improve quality in hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations; often it is carried out under the umbrella of ISQua’s International Accreditation Programme [1]. Suppose that a country already has well-developed regulatory requirements for the provision of healthcare, what is the value of adding accreditation on top of this – and what frictions should we expect?

Results

Conclusion