Evaluation of Indicators and Standards of Accreditation Programs in Military Health Centers: A Narrative Review Study

Military hospitals should be evaluated and accredited based on their specific criteria and characteristics, as they are specific and have specific objectives and structures. The present study was conducted to identify the indicators and standards of accreditation programs of military health care centers.

In this narrative review study, all Persian and English studies conducted from 2000 to 2019 in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases using a variety of keywords accreditation, quality assessment, hospital, health care center, military medicine, military and the armed forces were available, examined. In addition to manual search, websites of some hospitals and military centerswere also searched. After initial retrieval of 354 papers and documents, the three researchers independently evaluated their quality according to the study objectives, and unrelated studies were excluded from the final review and the necessary information was extracted from the remaining 16 sources.Data collection was done using a data extraction form designed based on the study purposes.

JCAHO was the most important organization that accredited the military health care services in the world. The main criteria, which are considered by hospital and other military health care centers, were in two categories of specific criteria and general criteria in 20 rows including structural, processes, outcomes standards, and treatment, services, management and leadership and quality improvement and security indicators.

With regard to the results of this study, paying more attention to structural, processes and outcome standards related to mission and structure of military health care providing centers and hospitals is suggested. Also these centers should be accredited based on modified standards as well as by other common accreditation organization.