Hospitals to be checked for service standards

CHENNAI: Observing that the quality of services at certain hospitals in the country had dipped after they obtained accreditation with the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare (NABH), its chairman Dr Narottam Puri said the board would soon begin surprise checks in accredited hospitals to ensure that they maintained the prescribed standards through the tenure of accreditation. This decision to conduct surprise checks in accredited hospitals was taken at a recent board meeting in December, he explained. The process of keeping the tenure of accreditation for hospitals as 18 months, along international standards, was also towards ensuring continuous quality among healthcare providers, he explained. A case in point was the AMRI Hospitals in Kolkata, which was ravaged by a fire in which more than 80 persons perished. Less than two months before the accident, the hospital’s plea for reaccreditation with the NABH could not be done as the accreditation body observed that the hospital’s fire safety provisions were not in place. Currently, the apex board has provided accreditation for 129 hospitals (not including single-specialty ones), while 13 have been reaccredited.The hospitals are checked for 639 points to ensure high standards. Accreditation with NABH is only voluntary and, in fact, only 4-5 government hospitals have opted for it, he said. In all, 250 assessors work in the area of giving accreditation. Also, in an endeavour to stock data about the performance of the different healthcare providers across the country, accredited hospitals have been asked by NABH to submit data about themselves within 10 parameters, like infection rates, bedsore cases. “About 83 per cent of the hospitals have responded, and we have issued letters to the rest clarifying that they will not be given reaccreditation if they did not provide the sought data,” Dr Puri said. In order to enforce the values of quality in the healthcare sector, the Medical Council of India was soon going to make quality and safety one of the subjects for students, he revealed.