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The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact

BACKGROUND: Healthcare accreditation standards are advocated as an important means of improving clinical practice and organisational performance. Standard development agencies have documented methodologies to promote open, transparent, inclusive development processes where standards are developed by...

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Autores principales: Greenfield, David, Pawsey, Marjorie, Hinchcliff, Reece, Moldovan, Max, Braithwaite, Jeffrey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22995152
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-329
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author Greenfield, David
Pawsey, Marjorie
Hinchcliff, Reece
Moldovan, Max
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
author_facet Greenfield, David
Pawsey, Marjorie
Hinchcliff, Reece
Moldovan, Max
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
author_sort Greenfield, David
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Healthcare accreditation standards are advocated as an important means of improving clinical practice and organisational performance. Standard development agencies have documented methodologies to promote open, transparent, inclusive development processes where standards are developed by members. They assert that their methodologies are effective and efficient at producing standards appropriate for the health industry. However, the evidence to support these claims requires scrutiny. The study’s purpose was to examine the empirical research that grounds the development methods and application of healthcare accreditation standards. METHODS: A multi-method strategy was employed over the period March 2010 to August 2011. Five academic health research databases (Medline, Psych INFO, Embase, Social work abstracts, and CINAHL) were interrogated, the websites of 36 agencies associated with the study topic were investigated, and a snowball search was undertaken. Search criteria included accreditation research studies, in English, addressing standards and their impact. Searching in stage 1 initially selected 9386 abstracts. In stage 2, this selection was refined against the inclusion criteria; empirical studies (n = 2111) were identified and refined to a selection of 140 papers with the exclusion of clinical or biomedical and commentary pieces. These were independently reviewed by two researchers and reduced to 13 articles that met the study criteria. RESULTS: The 13 articles were analysed according to four categories: overall findings; standards development; implementation issues; and impact of standards. Studies have only occurred in the acute care setting, predominately in 2003 (n = 5) and 2009 (n = 4), and in the United States (n = 8). A multidisciplinary focus (n = 9) and mixed method approach (n = 11) are common characteristics. Three interventional studies were identified, with the remaining 10 studies having research designs to investigate clinical or organisational impacts. No study directly examined standards development or other issues associated with their progression. Only one study noted implementation issues, identifying several enablers and barriers. Standards were reported to improve organisational efficiency and staff circumstances. However, the impact on clinical quality was mixed, with both improvements and a lack of measurable effects recorded. CONCLUSION: Standards are ubiquitous within healthcare and are generally considered to be an important means by which to improve clinical practice and organisational performance. However, there is a lack of robust empirical evidence examining the development, writing, implementation and impacts of healthcare accreditation standards.
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spelling pubmed-35207562012-12-13 The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact Greenfield, David Pawsey, Marjorie Hinchcliff, Reece Moldovan, Max Braithwaite, Jeffrey BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Healthcare accreditation standards are advocated as an important means of improving clinical practice and organisational performance. Standard development agencies have documented methodologies to promote open, transparent, inclusive development processes where standards are developed by members. They assert that their methodologies are effective and efficient at producing standards appropriate for the health industry. However, the evidence to support these claims requires scrutiny. The study’s purpose was to examine the empirical research that grounds the development methods and application of healthcare accreditation standards. METHODS: A multi-method strategy was employed over the period March 2010 to August 2011. Five academic health research databases (Medline, Psych INFO, Embase, Social work abstracts, and CINAHL) were interrogated, the websites of 36 agencies associated with the study topic were investigated, and a snowball search was undertaken. Search criteria included accreditation research studies, in English, addressing standards and their impact. Searching in stage 1 initially selected 9386 abstracts. In stage 2, this selection was refined against the inclusion criteria; empirical studies (n = 2111) were identified and refined to a selection of 140 papers with the exclusion of clinical or biomedical and commentary pieces. These were independently reviewed by two researchers and reduced to 13 articles that met the study criteria. RESULTS: The 13 articles were analysed according to four categories: overall findings; standards development; implementation issues; and impact of standards. Studies have only occurred in the acute care setting, predominately in 2003 (n = 5) and 2009 (n = 4), and in the United States (n = 8). A multidisciplinary focus (n = 9) and mixed method approach (n = 11) are common characteristics. Three interventional studies were identified, with the remaining 10 studies having research designs to investigate clinical or organisational impacts. No study directly examined standards development or other issues associated with their progression. Only one study noted implementation issues, identifying several enablers and barriers. Standards were reported to improve organisational efficiency and staff circumstances. However, the impact on clinical quality was mixed, with both improvements and a lack of measurable effects recorded. CONCLUSION: Standards are ubiquitous within healthcare and are generally considered to be an important means by which to improve clinical practice and organisational performance. However, there is a lack of robust empirical evidence examining the development, writing, implementation and impacts of healthcare accreditation standards. BioMed Central 2012-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC3520756/ /pubmed/22995152 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-329 Text en Copyright ©2012 Greenfield et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Greenfield, David
Pawsey, Marjorie
Hinchcliff, Reece
Moldovan, Max
Braithwaite, Jeffrey
The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title_full The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title_fullStr The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title_full_unstemmed The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title_short The standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
title_sort standard of healthcare accreditation standards: a review of empirical research underpinning their development and impact
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22995152
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-329
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