This presentation will address the importance of accreditation and the rational for countries adapting international standards to national custom and practice.
The World Health Organization's (WHO's) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) has mandated that we achieve universal health coverage (UHC), for all by 2030. As originally defined, UHC does not mean access to care but access to quality care. Achieving universal health coverage will require effective alignment between governments, payers, providers and service users. Accreditation has the potential to help to guide the way and provides a framework that facilitates the provision of high-quality patient care.
A report from (WHO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank in 2018 called on governments to urgently create a quality policy at a national level. Each country has multiple and complex needs and must develop its own pathway to UHC, and so there is no 'silver bullet' that will address improving quality in healthcare.
The Joint Commission International (JCI), developed in 1999, were the first international accreditation programme, and were soon followed by Accreditation Canada International and the Australia Council for Hospital Standards International (ACHSI). These three remained the only bodies offering international accreditation until the last decade which has witnessed a proliferation in countries developing their own standards.
Since 2000 ISQua have monitored the growth in accreditation bodies. The latest in a series of three surveys (2001, 2010 and 2021) was published in 2021 and revealed that there are 53 organisations offering accreditation services nationally or internationally to healthcare provider institutions or networks at primary, secondary or tertiary level. These organisations were located in 97 countries including high, middle and low-income countries. This compared to 44 organisations in 2010 offering accreditation services nationally or internationally to healthcare provider institutions at primary, secondary, or tertiary level.
