303448
Perinatal Care Accreditation program – a drive for health care standardization and quality improvement
Through implementation of Hospital Perinatal Care Accreditation program in collaboration with Ministry of Health JSI SUSTAIN project intends to create a sustainable platform for systematic improvement of health care service provision in Georgia and a strong incentive for hospitals to improve the quality of care.
SUSTAIN applied three critical steps in development of the program:
- Elaboration of clinical care standards
- Development of survey methodology
- Implementation of hospital accreditation process.
Implementation of perinatal care accreditation process has been initiated with surveys in two prominent maternity hospitals. The surveys demonstrated that the tools and standards are well crafted to perform the task. Based on the survey findings, both facilities demonstrated acceptable overall compliance with standards (80% and 87%) while several gaps were identified in the required elements that constitute the standards. Major gaps were related to high C-section rate, absence of clinical audit system, inappropriate medication storage, inadequate maternal counseling. The gaps were reported back to facility management and already in a month hospitals filled the majority of existing deficiencies.
The accreditation process aims at continuous and systematic improvement of the quality of patient care. Accredited hospitals submit quarterly data on performance measure indicators and must be surveyed externally every three years to maintain accreditation status.
We expect the Hospital Perinatal Care Accreditation program to gradually become a major drive for standardization and improvement of health care service provision in the country.
Learning Areas:
Program planningProvision of health care to the public
Learning Objectives:
Describe the steps of implementing perinatal care accreditation program in Georgia.
Discuss the results of accreditation and how the process supports improvement of the quality of care.
Keyword(s): Accreditation, Perinatal Health
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As a senior technical expert, MD, MPH, Deputy Chief of Party and activity manager I was directly involved in planning and implementing the perinatal care accreditation program. I was involved in development of the accreditation standards, methodology. I trained the surveyors and supervised the facility survey process.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.