Accreditation
Accreditation is an external review
of quality with four principal components:
- It is based on written and published standards
- Reviews are conducted by professional peers
- The accreditation process is administered by an independent body
- The aim of accreditation is to encourage organizational development.
Accreditation provides achievable
quality standards, supportive consulting, and benchmarking scores, all of which
assist facilities to improve the quality of their operations. Accreditation is
often confused with licensure, certification, mandatory minimum standards and
codes of practice, however they are quite different.
The complexity and expense of
accreditation makes it applicable only for hospitals and large clinics.
Accreditation is usually based on
voluntary participation by the facility, however in most successful cases,
access to funding (insurance payments for example) are conditional upon
accreditation, thereby providing a strong incentive for participation. Although
gaining in popularity in developing countries, there is little reason to believe that accreditation will
soon be a core part of quality improvement systems in low income countries.
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