Healthcare Accreditation: Purposes, Costs, and Value

Introduction to Healthcare Accreditation

Experts in the field claim that accreditation represents a key mechanism for evaluating healthcare facilities' performance and enhancing the safety and quality of care delivery. The term accreditation describes the external assessment process used to evaluate hospitals' and other healthcare centers' performance by studying their adherence to a number of pre-established, well-defined written performance benchmarks. It aims at encouraging ongoing quality improvements rather than merely upholding minimum required performance levels. Accreditation also refers to public approval that stems from a healthcare institution's achievement of certain care standards, validated following an autonomous external organizational performance appraisal (Jaafaripooyan, Agrizzi & Akbari-Haghighi, 2011). This paper addresses the purposes of accreditation and the costs associated with earning, maintaining, and forgoing it.

Purposes of Accreditation and Accreditation Standards

Organizations that are duly accredited are recognized as trustworthy and reliable entities committed to constant, long-term adherence to top quality standards. Accreditation is considered an important point of reference when gauging organizational quality. Preparation for accreditation gives healthcare organizations a chance to identify existing strengths and any potential areas for improvement. The preparation phase offers valuable information to management, facilitating effective decision-making with regard to operations and improving organizational performance in terms of productivity and efficacy (Why get accredited, 2016).

Moreover, accreditation helps distinguish a given healthcare organization from competing practitioners. An accredited hospital signals management's and the workforce's commitment to becoming the practitioner of choice, guaranteeing that clients receive the best possible healthcare. It also ensures improved patient confidence in the organization and broader public recognition. Accreditation aids in strengthening community confidence in the healthcare facility and its service quality. Additionally, it serves to increase organizational value. Given the incessant changes in the health sector, patients seek dependable professionals who consistently provide superior-quality healthcare and can validate their capacity to remain adherent to national standards. Through accreditation, a healthcare center can validate its capability to adapt to industry changes and increase its organizational value (Why get accredited, 2016).

Standards within the health accreditation field refer to feasible, desirable performance levels against which accrediting firms gauge real performance. Standards help hospitals and other healthcare units of all sizes incorporate efficient, reasonable client safety and quality enhancement programs into everyday operations. Clinical and external organizational accreditation benchmarks are deemed vital to promoting the dissemination of safe, dependable, and superior-quality health services and products (Greenfield et al., 2012). Hospital accreditation is regarded as a valuable means of promoting accountability in healthcare delivery; a positive accreditation status has generally been employed as an organizational marketing instrument (Menachemi et al., 2008).

Financial, Time, and Administrative Costs of Accreditation

One perspective on accreditation holds that substantial personnel time, effort, and organizational funds are devoted to the process — resources that might be put to better use elsewhere, such as in pursuing clinical care and service programs. Accreditation-related costs are a greatly debated issue in health plans. Accreditation represents a major investment, but healthcare organizations frequently question whether the commitment of energy, time, and funds creates tangible advantages. The most significant concern regarding accreditation is the cost involved in earning it. Insurers face double-digit growth in premiums imposed on organizations, intensifying their sensitivity to accreditation expenses, particularly because these expenses are passed on to them. Costs may vary considerably across different accreditation programs, although compliance-linked expenses — rather than site visit and application fees — often constitute the key difference (Cross, 2003).

All entities in the health sector are seeking budget cutbacks owing to the escalation in care delivery expenses for both healthcare organizations and their clients. Substantial sums of money must be allocated to accreditation, a procedure that requires healthcare organizations to pay accrediting firms for consultancy services, purchase requisite software (normally from the accrediting firm), and dedicate human resources to managing the process. Overall, accreditation-linked costs to the U.S. health sector are prohibitively high (Curnayn, 2011). The true accreditation-linked expenses mainly include dedicated workforce time, manuals, review applications, education and training on accreditation standards, interim review requirements, the review process itself, subsequent review by federal- or state-level agencies, and findings resolution (Whitney, 2013).

A large number of healthcare providers also raise concerns regarding accreditation initiatives' bureaucracy and the time they demand. Providers typically view such initiatives as costly, as adding limited value to healthcare, as variable depending on the assessor, and as posing accreditation standard-related challenges (What are the impacts of health sector accreditation, 2010).

Much of the overall cost goes into the labor-intensive activity of preparing for accreditation, especially in the final months leading up to an actual organizational survey. Individual organizational expenses are high, raising the question of whether pursuing accreditation is a wise decision. A Zambian study on accreditation revealed that the process was linked to unsustainable financial viability and expenses, overall, for individual hospitals (What are the impacts of health sector accreditation, 2010).