2 Ways to Refine Your Quality Management System

Accreditors have always needed to adapt to dynamic changes. You must ensure that you are assessing institutions based on the latest standards of their respective industries. Also, just like the institutions you audit, you must continuously refine your quality management system.

If you audit health care organizations or HCOs, in particular, you have to ensure that your accreditation process is competent in assessing the quality of health care delivered by an institution. Primarily, an HCO should be compliant to stringent standards (and proven so through audits), because if not, they would eventually encounter several treatment failures and run into trouble with the law, or their health care staff and clients or patients would be put in harm’s way.

Here are two ways to know what upgrades you need to ensure the compliance of HCOs and enable them to use the credentials you issue for revenue improvement and legitimacy:

Review your past accreditation processes.

Check your previous accreditations, and evaluate if the techniques or tools you used are still relevant and cost-effective for upcoming surveys. If your current quality management system is outdated or if it has caused you problems, consider replacing it with a better framework.

Seek feedback from institutions or stakeholders.

Additionally, don’t ignore the feedback given by the HCOs you have audited. Take note if your accreditation helped them improve patient outcomes and other significant measures. If they have valuable input that could be used to improve your system, contemplate integrating those feedback into your new framework.