Brief overview of NABH accreditation for you

The term called NABH accreditations is nothing new in the world of medical science. Rather, it emerged almost a decade back and became the lifeline of many top graded hospitals and medical institutions since then.

In case you have come across the hospital or clinic that you visit often and wish to know more about it, here are some information. Watch out!

When it all started

As it has been informed, the concept of giving NABH accreditation to hospitals started around 2006. During this time, it was decided by the Quality Council of India to standardise the quality of healthcare services across all the hospitals and medical centres in the country.

This led to the practice of awarding NABH Certification to various hospitals, clinics and medical centres.  Thus, the first standard of NABH certification got released in the mentioned year.

Review tenure of quality standards

The Quality Council of India formulated the practice of reviewing the quality standards as prescribed in the NABH certification at a regular interval of three years.  Thus, since the time of inception in 2006, there has been four tenures for review and modification of this quality certification scheme, once in 2009, once on 2012, and once in 2015. The due date for the fifth edition of NABH accreditation falls in 2018.

First hospital reviewed

The first hospital that applied for NABH accreditation and was granted so is the privately owned multispecialty hospital in Kerala, by the name Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS). The said hospital got its due accreditation in 2007.  On the other hand, Gandhinagar General hospital in Gujrat is the first one among the public owned healthcare centres that applied for this certification. The said public hospital got its due accreditation in the year 2009. Since then, this has become a common trend among healthcare centres to certify their quality standards through NABH certification. Thus, until now, approximately 400 public and privately owned healthcare centres have acquired the status of NABH accreditations.

Core contents of the standard

Among the core contents of this quality standard includes around six hundred healthcare objectives that the applying hospital is supposed to meet.   These objectives are segregated into two divisions; one division deals with quality standards related to healthcare service provided to patients and the other division deals with certain healthcare specifications related to the applying hospital. The applying hospital is expected to follow a thoroughly process driven approach starting from registration and admission of patients to discharge related protocols.