Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2006 Sep 12:6:113.
doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-6-113.

A prospective, multi-method, multi-disciplinary, multi-level, collaborative, social-organisational design for researching health sector accreditation [LP0560737]

Jeffrey Braithwaite  1 , Johanna Westbrook, Marjorie Pawsey, David Greenfield, Justine Naylor, Rick Iedema, Bill Runciman, Sally Redman, Christine Jorm, Maureen Robinson, Sally Nathan, Robert Gibberd
Affiliations

A prospective, multi-method, multi-disciplinary, multi-level, collaborative, social-organisational design for researching health sector accreditation [LP0560737]

Jeffrey Braithwaite et al. BMC Health Serv Res. .

Abstract

Background: Accreditation has become ubiquitous across the international health care landscape. Award of full accreditation status in health care is viewed, as it is in other sectors, as a valid indicator of high quality organisational performance. However, few studies have empirically demonstrated this assertion. The value of accreditation, therefore, remains uncertain, and this persists as a central legitimacy problem for accreditation providers, policymakers and researchers. The question arises as to how best to research the validity, impact and value of accreditation processes in health care. Most health care organisations participate in some sort of accreditation process and thus it is not possible to study its merits using a randomised controlled strategy. Further, tools and processes for accreditation and organisational performance are multifaceted.

Methods/design: To understand the relationship between them a multi-method research approach is required which incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data. The generic nature of accreditation standard development and inspection within different sectors enhances the extent to which the findings of in-depth study of accreditation process in one industry can be generalised to other industries. This paper presents a research design which comprises a prospective, multi-method, multi-level, multi-disciplinary approach to assess the validity, impact and value of accreditation.

Discussion: The accreditation program which assesses over 1,000 health services in Australia is used as an exemplar for testing this design. The paper proposes this design as a framework suitable for application to future international research into accreditation. Our aim is to stimulate debate on the role of accreditation and how to research it.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Hypothesised interrelationships between organisational characteristics.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic of the proposed research design.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Chapleau W. Accreditation of ambulance services: building EMS for the future. Emergency Medical Services. 2000;29:73–75. - PubMed
    1. Jones LG, Price AL. Changes in computer science accreditation. Communication of the ACM. 2002;45:99–103. doi: 10.1145/545151.545158. - DOI
    1. Karapetrovic S, Rajamani D, Willborn W. The university "manufacturing" system: ISO 9000 and accreditation issues. International Journal of Engineering Education. 1997;13:180–189.
    1. Sheldon T. The healthcare quality measurement industry: time to slow the juggernaut? Quality & Safety in Health Care. 2005;14 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Skilbeck M, Connell H. Quality assurance and accreditation in Australian higher education: a national seminar on future arrangements. Canberra, Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs; 2000.

Publication types