The logo of the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers, abbreviated as NABH, can be seen proudly displayed as a badge of honour on the visage of many hospitals. For them, it showcases to the world at large and their potential clients in particular the fact that they have been certified as a centre delivering quality process-based healthcare. This post is aimed at helping you understand the essentials of NABH and what makes it so important in today’s healthcare ecosystem.

Why is Accreditation important?

Accreditation is a transparent system of control over the accredited hospital which assures that the hospital will constantly fulfill the accreditation criteria. In order to maintain the quality, Accreditation councils conduct regular surveillance of the accredited healthcare organization. The on-site survey of the hospital and staff by the experienced accreditation assessment team encourages them to improve the performance goals.

It also provides an opportunity to the hospital to set benchmarks with the best in the industry and motivates them to keep growing. The largest beneficiaries are patients, as they get good quality of care, safety and are assured to be treated by a qualified and prepared medical staff, who have been trained on ways to handle every situation.

NABH’s History and Context in the World

NABH is a constituent board of the Quality Council of India, which was established in the year 2006. The NABH body is also a board member and Accreditation council member for several international healthcare organizations like International Society for Quality in Health Care and Asian Society for Quality in Healthcare. It mainly operates accreditation programs for healthcare organizations. In order to get an NABH accreditation, hospitals and healthcare providers need to have standards that consist of 600 plus rules and procedures.

The first hospital to be accredited by NABH was the ‘Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS), Kerala’ which is a 650-bed hospital and was accredited in 2007 and till date, more than 350 hospitals in India has achieved accreditation by NABH.

NABH is equivalent to Joint Commission International (JCI), a US-based non-profit organization that has accredited more than 21,000 health care organization and programs in the United States. Along with this, NABH is also equivalent to other international standards like Australian Council on Healthcare, the Japan Council for Quality in Healthcare and the National Committee for Quality Assurance in the United States.

Getting the complete NABH certification is a very complex and expensive affair, and the NABH committee felt that standards could be introduced at an introductory level, which would not only guarantee some quality but also help hospitals prepare for the complete NABH accreditation. This lead NABH to start a new program for accreditation of smaller hospitals, called NABH Entry Level. These are hospitals who want to get onto the quality journey but who are not able to meet the NABH requirements of the full NABH certification. Once the small hospitals get in the race, they can even work on moving to full NABH accreditation.

Role of Technology in NABH

One of the most important standards that NABH outlined was Information Management System (IMS). In this management system, they mostly empathize on the patient’s and organization’s data. As a requirement, the organization must have a complete and accurate medical record for every patient and will create a unique identifier for every medical record. Furthermore, the formats of data are also standardized.

Another technology requirement for NABH is Human Resource Management software. Setting up an HRM system will provide an efficient and effective of managing human resources for the hospitals. The system helps to process the collecting, verifying, and evaluating the credentials of staffs, according to which the hospital can assign clinical work to the staffs or nurses.

These are the standards where technology can play a crucial role in managing and controlling the hospitals and hence they are outlined for NABH standards. Hospitals Accredited by NABH have successfully implemented such technology.

“NABH intends to be a robust, accessible and competent organization to compliment the healthcare system to improve its efficiency and the predictability of healthcare outcomes.” By Dr. Harish Nadkarni (CEO NABH)