Accreditation by QHA Trent

An external eye can be very helpful when it comes to uncovering problems and concerns within a hospital or clinic and correcting them.  The best disinfectant for problems and concerns is to cast light upon them.   Problems and concerns can not only discomfit patients, third party payers and regulatory authorities but can also cost a healthcare provider or a doctor money, for example if a disatisfied patient were to take legal action.   Also, hospitals, clinics & residential care homes may wish to have external verification of their commitment to quality, for example to assist them with their marketing.   Working with standards referenced and triangulated mainly against the practices and procedures inherent in UK clinical governance (but with bespoke elements), and applied by experienced volunteer surveyors derived from medical, nursing, allied healthcare professional and managerial backgrounds, QHA Trent's Accreditation Services will work in partnership with hospitals, clinics & residential care homes located anywhere in the world to identify risk and maximise safety for patients, staff, visitors and the general public.  In addition, ethics and probity are vital issues in healthcare, not just in relation to clinical matters (including, for example, the appropriateness of investigations ordered and treatments undertaken) but also in relation to charging, billing and advertising - and the latter is not just of interest to individual patients but also to insurance companies and other third party payers.    QHA Trent adheres to a developmental approach to the accreditation process, and the scheme can either: survey and accredit individual hospitals, clinics or residential care homes with surveyors brought in entirely from outside the country, or work with a group of hospitals or residential care homes within a given locality to set up a locally-based system for surveying and accrediting those hospitals which makes use of surveyors recruited from the staff of those hospitals.  Those locally-based surveyors would receive training from QHA Trent and would join externally-sourced surveyors on the surveying teams.   QHA Trent adheres to a policy of not only identifying areas of concern which require remedying but also flagging up areas meriting commendation.    Following a survey, the decision whether or not to award accreditation to a hospital or clinic is the remit of QHA Trent's Accreditation Award Panel, which is independent of the Executive Directors.    If safety is to be optimally maintained, assessment and accreditation should always be independent.  This means that, for example, accreditation schemes should not have a specific vested financial interest in the outcome of any particular hospital or clinic's attempt at achieving a favourable accreditation outcome.  Likewise, bodies such as insurance companies and international assistance companies run the risk of "conflict of interest" if they only move patients to hospitals which they themselves have assessed as being "fit for pupose" without any verifiably independent external input (go to the relevant page for further details).   To maintain the integrity of the overall process, QHA Trent is putting in place an independent Accreditation Oversight Panel to (a) monitor the work of QHA Trent's Accreditation Award Panel and the surveying teams, and (b) to ensure that throughout the accreditation process appropriate ethical standards are adhered to.   QHA Trent is an institutional member of ISQua and a member of UKAF