I would like to point your attention to a paper that has just been published in the International Journey for Quality in Health Care by Ellen Joan van Vliet and co-workers. The paper is freely available here. It describes experience with accreditation in four countries (Australia, Botswana, Denmark, and Jordan) in terms of why, how, what, and lessons learned.

ISQua welcomes the paper and would like to encourage both healthcare providers and healthcare external evaluation bodies to analyze and publish research based on their data to add to the evidence base for accreditation.

Accreditation is a tool, actually a complex tool applied to a highly complex system. We can’t expect to find a universal answer to the question “Is accreditation effective?” that applies to every specific accreditation programme used in every context. But by exploring the why, how, what and lessons learned, research can help policymakers, leaders, practitioners, and service users to answer the question “How can accreditation be used effectively in my context?” and – not least important – “How could accreditation processes be improved to support enhanced quality of care even better?”

Best wishes,

Carsten Engel