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. 2018 Sep 20;18(1):216.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-018-1321-0.

Examining the impact of accreditation on a primary healthcare organization in Qatar

Alia Ghareeb  1 , Hana Said  2 , Mohamad El Zoghbi  2
Affiliations

Examining the impact of accreditation on a primary healthcare organization in Qatar

Alia Ghareeb et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Although a modest body of literature exists on accreditation, little research was conducted on the impact of accreditation on primary healthcare organizations in the Middle East. This study assessed the changes resulting from the integration of Accreditation Canada International's accreditation program in a primary healthcare organization in the State of Qatar.

Methods: The study investigated how accreditation helped introduce organizational changes through promoting organizational learning as well as quality improvement initiatives. Applying a quantitative design, a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 500 staff. The study used Spearman's correlation coefficient to analyze the collected survey data.

Results: Overall employees agreed on the positive impact of accreditation. The results showed a significantly positive correlation between staff perception of accreditation and of quality of care. The two dominant cultures at Primary Health Care Corporation were "group" (with a score of 28.61) and "hierarchical" (with a score of 26.59). The results showed a positive correlation between staff perception of accreditation and their perception of culture type whenever the culture was identified as "group".

Conclusions: This study provided much-needed insight on the possible changes that organizations might go through in relation to quality improvement and organizational learning.

Keywords: Accreditation; Primary healthcare; Quality improvement.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval for the study was granted by the Walden University Institutional Review Board (IRB) and by the Research Committee at Primary Health Care Corporation. Data was collected anonymously. The survey was sent out to randomly selected employees through an email that included necessary elements of consent. The completion of the survey was considered implied consent to participate.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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