Evaluation of hospital accreditation standards

Evaluation and accreditation of hospitals have important roles in improving the quality, safety, and effectiveness of healthcare services in hospitals. The effectiveness of an accreditation system depends on appropriateness, quality and consistency of methods, standards and surveyors. This study aimed to evaluate the content of hospital accreditation standards from the perspective of the hospital managers.
The study was conduct in 2015 using a valid and reliable questionnaire. 547 hospital managers were surveyed using stratified random sampling method. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods including Kruskal, Mann-Whitney and logistic regression were used for data analysis.
Hospital managers were moderately satisfied with the content of national hospital accreditation standards (the mean score of 2.64±0.67 out of 5). Only 15.1 percent of hospital managers were satisfied with the content of the hospital accreditation standards. Most complaints were related to a lack of transparency of standards and criteria, number of standards and using the same weight for criteria.
Reducing the number of standards and criteria, leveling criteria and making them more transparent, changing the scale of scoring, applying functional approach and also considering the diversity of hospitals in the formulation of criteria help improve the content of accreditation standards.