A look at six accredited South African private hospitals and how they managed to operate during COVID.

The COVID pandemic has taught the world many lessons. It shifted paradigms that global public health has taken for granted. The question that remains foremost in the minds of many is this: can health systems be made robust so that when the next pandemic or other disaster hits, we will be ready?

In healthcare, the idea of external evaluation took hold with quiet beginnings almost 100 years ago when Ernest Codman, a pioneering American surgeon hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, had the brightidea of suggesting that clinicians and hospitals follow patients and assess whether the outcomes oftheir treatments were realised. 

ISQua CEO Carsten Engel and ISQua Board Member Wendy Nicklin discuss the future of accreditation in our changing world. Does accreditation need to be more dynamic? 

26th August 2020, 15:00 - 16:30 (GMT+8)

This webinar is intended for those who are interested in accreditation, quality and safety from the perspectives of the healthcare provider, healthcare professionals and workers, and to all healthcare-related organisations or persons who are interested in learning about practising quality and safety in times of a crisis situation.

In a world where data fluctuates between showing the impact of accreditation on healthcare institutions and negating it, we, at the Health Care Accreditation Council (HCAC), were intrigued to look into whether accredited healthcare institutions in Jordan were more ready to deal with the requirements of COVID-19 or not?

It was a pleasure to host Dr Carsten Engel, ISQua Expert and world expert in accreditaton and external evaluation, for a live webinar on Accreditation as a driver of improvement and knowledge transfer.

ISQua were delighted to host Professor René Amalberti, who presented a great live webinar on Three challenges for external evaluation: Ensuring relevance and preparing for the 30’s. This session was a joint production of the Innovation and System Change Working Group and the Accreditation Council of ISQua.

I recently spent a few days in Beijing at the invitation of the National Institute of Hospital Administration (NIHA), to attend a workshop on the Healthcare Accreditation in the Asia Pacific.

This was an opportunity to hear about the application of accreditation by different health economies in the Asian-Pacific Region.

In my time as an ISQua Emerging Leader, I have been learning through an approach based on knowledge transfer and skills exchange. It’s strange but great because I've become more aware of and have really experienced Brian Herbert’s quote: “The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill and the willingness to learn is a choice.”

We congratulate the Deeble Institute and the authors, Mr Ryan Swiers and Dr Rebecca Haddock, on the recent publication of the evidence brief (#18) titled “Assessing the value of accreditation to health systems and organisations”.  As a group of professionals committed to the contribution of accreditation to quality improvement in healthcare, this brief is one of value and raises some key issues.