| Summary: | ABSTRACT
Background: Hospital accreditation is one strategy to evaluate quality of health care services. The Accreditation system influences the success of its implementation. In Indonesia, accreditation for hospitals is carried out by the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation (KARS). The result of accreditation, however, has not improved the quality of hospital service. Therefore, in order to improve the accreditation system benchmarking was carried out with a recognized accreditation body in Australia.
Method: External benchmarking was conducted to compare accreditation body in Indonesia and Australia. The following organizations were chosen: the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) and KARS. The questionnaire was based on the ISQua 10 standards for accreditation body. Similarities and differences were documented taking into considerations several factors that are not comparable.
Result and discussion: The differences of these accreditation bodies were concerning the institution and the standards. ACHS is an independent body and EQuIP (Evaluation and Quality Improvement Program) was applied in the accreditation process. The commitment of ACHS to continuously improve quality of hospital service was written in a four year contract, of which accreditation was part of the quality improvement process. EQUIP is an international standard, focusing on patient safety and in corporating clinical indicators. While KARS is a functional team under the Directorate General of Medical Service that undertakes hospital accreditation using structure and partly process oriented standards. Uncomparable factor was considered, i.e., complete insurance coverage in Australia. Only accredited hospitals in Australia can provide services to those covered by insurance.
Conclusion and recommmendation: KARS should be modified into an independent body and applies optimum-international standards. Health service facilities may join the certification process carried out by a provincial quality council before participating in an accreditation program. Both minimum and optimum standards should consider patient safety as the most important character, and use clinical indicators to measure quality.
Keywords: accreditation, quality improvement, external benchmarking
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