This is a list of international healthcare accreditation organizations. These organizations are responsible for the accreditation of hospitals and other healtchcare services. The Joint Commission is one of the most widely used accreditation organizations. The International Society for the Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) is the umbrella organization responsible for accrediting the Joint Commission accreditation scheme in the US and Accreditation Canada International, as well as accreditation organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia. [1] Many countries have either voluntary or mandatory accreditation requirements. [2]
The following is a list of hospital accreditation organizations grouped by country:
Ministries of health in several sub-Saharan African countries, including Zambia, Uganda, and South African, were reported to have begun planning health system reform including hospital accreditation before 2002. However, most hospitals in Africa are administered by local health ministries or missionary organizations without accreditation programs. [3] [4]
Brazil, Argentina, and Chile were engaged in a hospital accreditation program in the 1990s in collaboration with PAHO. [3] [4]
As of 2009, Mexico signed an agreement with the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, now the Joint Commission to adopt U.S. hospital standards for accreditation. [30]
Hospital accreditation is required in order to be eligible for Medicare patient coverage. [2]
Medical tourism refers to people traveling abroad to obtain medical treatment. In the past, this usually referred to those who traveled from less-developed countries to major medical centers in highly developed countries for treatment unavailable at home. However, in recent years it may equally refer to those from developed countries who travel to developing countries for lower-priced medical treatments. The motivation may be also for medical services unavailable or non-licensed in the home country: There are differences between the medical agencies worldwide which decide whether a drug is approved in their country or not. Even within Europe, although therapy protocols might be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), several countries have their own review organizations in order to evaluate whether the same therapy protocol would be "cost-effective", so that patients face differences in the therapy protocols, particularly in the access of these drugs, which might be partially explained by the financial strength of the particular Health System.
The Joint Commission is a United States-based nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c) organization that accredits more than 22,000 US health care organizations and programs. The international branch accredits medical services from around the world. A majority of US state governments recognize Joint Commission accreditation as a condition of licensure for the receipt of Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.
Outpatient surgery, also known as ambulatory surgery, day surgery, day case surgery, or same-day surgery, is surgery that does not require an overnight hospital stay. The term “outpatient” arises from the fact that surgery patients may enter and leave the facility on the same day. The advantages of outpatient surgery over inpatient surgery include greater convenience and reduced costs.
Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.
A Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection and analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Health information management (HIM) is information management applied to health and health care. It is the practice of analyzing and protecting digital and traditional medical information vital to providing quality patient care. With the widespread computerization of health records, traditional (paper-based) records are being replaced with electronic health records (EHRs). The tools of health informatics and health information technology are continually improving to bring greater efficiency to information management in the health care sector.
The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is a team-based health care delivery model led by a health care provider to provide comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with a goal to obtain maximal health outcomes. It is described in the "Joint Principles" as "an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults."
Due to the near-universal desire for safe and good quality healthcare, there is a growing interest in international healthcare accreditation. Providing healthcare, especially of an adequate standard, is a complex and challenging process. Healthcare is a vital and emotive issue—its importance pervades all aspects of societies, and it has medical, social, political, ethical, business, and financial ramifications. In any part of the world healthcare services can be provided either by the public sector or by the private sector, or by a combination of both, and the site of delivery of healthcare can be located in hospitals or be accessed through practitioners working in the community, such as general medical practitioners and dental surgeons.
The Trent Accreditation Scheme (TAS), now replaced de facto by a number of independent accreditation schemes, such as the QHA Trent Accreditation, was a British accreditation scheme formed with a mission to maintain and continually evaluate standards of quality, especially in health care delivery, through the surveying and accreditation of health care organisations, especially hospitals and clinics, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world.
Hospital accreditation has been defined as “A self-assessment and external peer assessment process used by health care organizations to accurately assess their level of performance in relation to established standards and to implement ways to continuously improve”. Critically, accreditation is not just about standard-setting: there are analytical, counseling and self-improvement dimensions to the process. There are parallel issues in evidence-based medicine, quality assurance and medical ethics, and the reduction of medical error is a key role of the accreditation process. Hospital accreditation is therefore one component in the maintenance of patient safety. However, there is limited and contested evidence supporting the effectiveness of accreditation programs.
National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers), abbreviated as NABH, is a constituent board of Quality Council of India (QCI), set up to establish and operate accreditation programme for healthcare organizations. Formed in 2005, it is the principal accreditation for hospitals in India.
The Community Health Accreditation Partner (CHAP) is a national, independent, U.S. not-for-profit accrediting body for community-based health care organizations. CHAP is the oldest national, community-based accrediting body with more than 9,000 agencies currently accredited nationwide.
The Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) is a United States non-profit health care accrediting organization. It represents an alternative to the Joint Commission and CHAP, The Community Health Accreditation Program.
The United Kingdom Akkreditering Forum (UKAF), founded in June 1998 by a group of leading healthcare accreditation organisations, is a London-based network of healthcare accreditation organisations formed with the intention of sharing experience regarding good practice in accreditation, as well as sharing new ideas around improving the methodology for such programmes. It has an additional role in working to ensure that the general public develop a clearer idea about accreditation, its function, its implications and its execution.
Partners HealthCare International (PHI) provides advisory services and professional consulting to organizations outside the United States. PHI is a subsidiary of Partners HealthCare System, a non-profit health care system based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Medtral is a New Zealand based medical travel company that provides private medical care to overseas patients. All surgical procedures undertaken by Medtral are performed by English speaking surgeons and physicians all of whom have received their training both in New Zealand and either North America or Europe and are performed in internationally accredited hospitals. Each Medtral patient is assigned a ‘lead medical carer’- who co-ordinates all aspects of the patient’s medical care.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
Deemed status is a hospital accreditation for hospitals in the United States.
The Quality Council of India (QCI) was set up as a public private partnership model on the model existing in Netherlands at the time, where although the NAB was not owned by the government, yet it was supported by it and was exceedingly used as a third party agency to improve quality in departments and industry. QCI thus, came to be organized as an independent autonomous body that worked towards assuring quality standards across all spheres of economic and social activities. Key industry associations, i.e. Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Confederation of Indian Industry(CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) became the promoters of the organizers and QCI got established under the Societies Registration Act in 1996 to provide accreditation services in various sectors for product, services and persons.
The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 22,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States.