Accreditation of Health Facilities

Accreditation of Health FacilitiesStudent Name:School Name:
Accreditation of Health Facilities
Definition of Accreditation  In order to ensure competency, credibility and authority in any professional body, it becomes imperative that accreditation process be subjected to a professional or a professional body. This process [accreditation] serves to ensure that the professional or the professional body’s certification practice is within the acceptable legal and ethical standards. Accreditation therefore is to ensure competency and be in a position to analyze and consequently certify third parties [the professional and professional bodies].  Importance of Accreditation It is appreciated that lack of accreditation would lead to professionalism behaving in ethically unacceptable standards and delivering of low standards in terms of services and goods being provided to the general public. To exemplify this point clearly, a person should consider the standards that a testing laboratory for instance has to adhere to in order to be allowed to carry out laboratory services. The specialists who work in the laboratory have to be able to handle all the laboratory requirements according to the requirements set up by the professional body. To ensure that this is done, the specialists have got to be accredited to ensure they meet the required standard and that should they behave negligently, they can be hold accountable through legal processes. Consumer protection is the main purpose of accreditation process (Scandlen, 2005). Professionalism is full of informational asymmetry; a consumer depends on the expert opinion of a professional in a specific matter. Since the consumer has got no prior knowledge on the intricacies of his needs, a professional may take advantage of this asymmetry and decide to exaggerate an issue or even offer less information than required in a bid to convince the consumer to consider options that are relevant to the professional and not the client. This leads to improper decision making on the consumer and consequently translates into loss of substantial revenue that would otherwise been saved had the professional offered the right advice. Accreditation ensures that Gatekeeping in the medical sense is also properly adhered to (Ferris et al, 2001). With such a reality, it then becomes important that accreditation be done on professionalism to hold the professionals accountable for their misdeeds legally. Bodies Tasked with accreditation in the US As discussed above, accreditation is done on professionalism to ensure that they adhere to the required standards and hence protecting the consumers. The care giving system in the US is therefore under constant accreditation to ensure that patients in need for medical services [care giving] are properly attended to, and that the right procedures and medical facilities are available in health institutions to help them achieve the needs of the patients in a prudent and acceptable manner. To make sure that this is adhered to, there are various bodies in the US that have been tasked with this responsibility of accreditation. The individual professionals have got their own accreditation bodies. For instance, nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals have got their accreditation bodies; however, the care giving system in the US as a whole is accredited by other bodies. This is in a bid to ensure that there is standardization in all the care giving bodies in the country. The “Utilization Review Accreditation Commission” [URAC] together with “Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care” [AAAHC] are some of the main bodies that have been tasked with ensuring that the care giving institutions are accredited. URAC has got various accreditation programs; some of the programs are intended to review the whole health facility. This includes investigating the standards available for an institution’s health plan. It is currently largest healthcare accreditation body in the US (URAC, 2011). The AAAHC has also actively involved itself in accreditation of health facilities since 1983. It emphasizes on functions that are critical in the operation of health care systems. This includes services that the clients can use in addressing grievances as well as systems in place to help the care givers engage in their caregiving functions effectively. Other accreditation bodies include The Joint Commission [TJC], DNV Healthcare, Healthcare Quality Association on Accreditation [HQAA], Accreditation Commission for Health Care [ACHC], National Committee for Quality Assurance [NCQA], The Compliance Team, Community Health Accreditation Program [CHAP] and the Health Care Fa...