Quality care is the ultimate goal for the patient, the provider, the organizational leader and the policy maker. Ensuring this quality of care can be achieved through an approach known as accreditation that measures conformity to standard and also provides educative and consultative information to help reduce the system's inefficiencies and achieve optimal use of resources. Not only has the demand for accreditation increased around the world, but traditional accreditation is being adapted to public agendas so that internal self-development in hospitals is linked to external regulation.

In fact, the trend is gaining momentum and countries are moving from certification and licensure towards developing National Accreditation programs after reported success in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This is also attributed to the fact that accreditation programs are consultative as well as educational, rather than being punitive.

National accreditation systems are programs that aim to provide accreditation services to primary care, community services, hospitals or networks. These include statutory and voluntary bodies that offer organizational development through external assessment of health services by means of published service standards. In countries similar to Lebanon, where accreditation is nationally mandated, single local programs are developed for uniform accreditation of health services. This ensures credibility and sustainability of the program.

Before adopting a specific accreditation program, countries perform a situational analysis to define the constraints and enablers within their system and design the program accordingly. In Lebanon the MOPH carried out the pilot project over the span of 5 years and this has set the groundwork to move ahead with the knowledge of successes and failures for guidance.


Hospital Accreditation in Lebanon

Accreditation is increasingly being used as a tool for government regulation to guarantee quality of care.

Quality of care has recently become a major concern for policy makers in Lebanon. Improving quality of care involves improvement in all the components of delivery, including: structure, process, and outcome of health care.

With the intention to improve the quality of care, control health expenditures, and protect consumers in Lebanon, the MOPH developed and implemented a new hospital accreditation policy in Lebanon, in collaboration with the World Bank through the health sector rehabilitation project (HSRP) to replace the old Alpha-Star rating system. With the assistance of an Australian company, Overseas Project Corporation of Victoria (OPCV), the MOPH developed an accreditation manual for hospitals in Lebanon (Hospital Accreditation Manual and Guidelines) containing multi-disciplinary standards of care.

Phases of the accreditation system in Lebanon
The accreditation system adopted by the MOPH consisted of four phases:

Phase One: Developing and Pilot -Testing Standards & Procedures (2000-2001)
Phase Two: First National Survey (2001-2002)
Phase Three: Follow-up Audit and Standards Revision (2002-2003)
Phase Four: Second National survey (2004 -2005)

For more information regarding the national hospital surveys, and for review of national standards and guidelines, you are kindly requested to visit the “hospitals accreditation” section of the Ministry of Public Health website: http://www.public-health.gov.lb