NABH accreditation has already become a norm for hospital industry in India; almost all hospitals, large and small sized, for profit and charitable, are now aspiring for accreditation. Most of these hospitals have either renewed or in process of renewing their institution in accordance to the NABH standards. This topic explains what could happen if wrong approach is followed for accreditation preparation.
ACCREDITATION ADDING TO WORKLOAD
The government decided to design NABH accreditation standards and systems in order to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. The intention was never to increase the workload on employees or the complexity of hospital functioning. However, some hospitals face issues while accreditation. For instance, some of the hospitals have asked the nurses to read out all rights to their patient on admission. Well, this seems like a rough-and-ready way to accomplish the standard’s requirement. But at the same time, it does add a lot of stress to the nurses who are already loaded down with responsibilities. Alternatively, nurses should be asked to educate only those patients whom they feel are in need of. The results would definitely be to the same degree, if not better. Furthermore, information that is collected through different types of forms should be integrated so that it takes little effort.
TACKLING THE PROBLEM OF REDUNDANCY
Another prominent trouble that surfaces while the hospital is undergoing NABH accreditation is – Redundancy. The same patient safety related incident gets captured by doctors in medical records, nurses in their registers and management executives in their forms. Sometimes, hospitals end up implementing practices which are totally unnecessary. For instance, nutritional screening should not be used for all the patients. The doctors and nurses should identify the patient who genuinely needs it through screening and only then go ahead with it. But some hospitals fail to comprehend the standards related to nutritional needs and implement a policy of detailed nutritional assessment of all admitted patients on day one. Similarly, if full time presence of ACLS trained staff is already there, code blue announcement system need not include ICUs.
NABH – THE RIGHT WAY TO GO
Different hospitals meet and need different policies and processes. The standards required by one hospital are not useful to another hospital. So when the hospitals prepare for NABH accreditation, they may unknowingly create certain policies that are not essential or add any value to quality or safety of care. Besides, it just compounds the workload and makes working complicated. Due to this, in the long run, hospitals grapple with difficulty to maintain compliance and sustain them. All of these problems can be avoided. The hospitals just need to take the time to truly develop a deeper understanding of standards and its objectives. The ultimate focus should be on creating systems that are simple, sustainable yet add value at the same time.
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