Hospital Accreditation Consultants

Quality Management System for Hospitals

Hospital services in our country, whether high end Multi or Single Specialty, Tertiary or Secondary Care or first level Primary Health Centres, most suffer because of an unstructured co-ordination between support functions, right from registration to the final discharge of the patient. Whether it is maintaining or recording the history of customer health, or providing timely services like nursing, diet supply, housekeeping or equipment management (very little in these days of advanced technology), it is increasingly being felt that the patients just don't feel medication alone as all important but are equally sensitive to other components of the health care support services too.
Implementing a Quality Management System like the NABH helps to integrate all these disparate functions in the Hospital to give the best quality of service to the customers of the Hospital – the Patients.
NABH Hospital Accreditation program was started in the year 2005. It is the flagship program for NABH. This program was started with an intent to improve healthcare quality and patient safety at public and private hospitals, has subsequently grown to greater heights, with the standards being recognized internationally at par with other global healthcare accreditation standards and accredited by ISQua (International Society for Quality Assurance in Healthcare). The accreditation standards for hospitals focuses on patient safety and quality of the delivery of services by the hospitals in a changing healthcare environment.

Ten chapters of Hospital Standards are:

The major benefits to any Hospital from Implementing quality standards are:

Organisational Benefits
  • Standardization – Helps the Hospital set up achievable set of Quality of Service Levels.
  • Helps build up a quality conscious Organization, through all round awareness of the importance of quality.
Service Related Benefits
  • Service Quality – Consistency in the quality of service achieved in time.
  • Enhanced Patient Satisfaction.
  • Better Quality of Care – Standardization of support services assists medical professionals in providing better quality of care.
Operational Benefits
  1. Increased Productivity – Quality Conscious, Trained and motivated employees working towards the common goal of quality, leads to exponential increase in productivity.
  2. Cost Savings – The savings achieved through a well documented and standardized process is tremendous.
    • Procurement / storage costs by better vendor selection, standardization of materials, less inspection/rejection, identification of slow/non-moving items
    • Employee costs, by conducting training/awareness programmes, improving motivation levels and reducing employee turnover
    • Equipment Costs, by better utilization and maintenance practices, like setting up preventive maintenance schedules
    • Liability costs, with increasing Consumer Protection Act related litigation a quality approach is the best insurance in avoiding liability costs in settlements and legal costs
  3. Increased Footfall resulting from reducing customer complaints through a more responsive & focussed customer care
  4. Efficient Operation of Support Services – The functioning of various support services can be streamlined to achieve maximum efficiency and resource utilization
Other Benefits
  • International Acceptance and Visibility – Accreditation and Certification could be an effective marketing and branding tool for the Hospital.
  • Corporate & Institutional Clients – Will lead to increased business from the corporate and institutional clients through empanelment for employee reimbursements and packages like pre-employment and annual check-ups.
  • Third Party Payment Systems – The opening up of the insurance market has lead to increase in patients through Third party payments, Insurance companies, Third Party Administrators (TPA), Health Maintenances Organizations (HMO). Quality Accreditations are soon becoming mandatory for tie-ups with such players, which is likely to form a huge percentage of patient traffic in coming years.

Who can apply?

How much does it costs:
– The Guidebook to NABH 5 th Edition Standards for Hospitals: Rs. 6,000/-
Application Fees & NABH Accreditation Charges are as follows:
– Guidebook to NABH 5th Edition Standards for Hospitals : Rs. 6000/-
Application fee and NABH Accreditation charges:
Size of HospitalsAssessment CriteriaAccreditation Fees (Rs.)
Pre- AssessmentAssessmentSurveillanceApplication FeesAnnual Accreditation Fees
Upto 100 Beds4 Man DaysSix Man Days (3 X 2)Four Man Days (2 X 2)Rs. 40,000/-Rs. 1,65,000/-
101-300 Beds4 Man DaysNine Man Days (3 X 3)Six Man Days (3 X 2)Rs. 75,000/-Rs. 2,50,000/-
301-500 Beds6 Man DaysTwelve Man Days (4 X 3)Nine Man Days (3 X 3)Rs. 1,00,000/-Rs. 3,60,000/-
501 Beds & above6 Man DaysSixteen/ Fifteen Man Days (4 X 4) or (5 X 3)Nine Man Days (3 X 3)Rs. 1,50,000/-Rs. 4,40,000/-
The Fees structure is based on the number of man days required for assessment.
**GST: W.e.f. 01.06.2016 a GST of 18% or as applicable will be charged on all the above fees. You are requested to please include the service tax in the fees accordingly while sending to NABH.
Accreditation timeline:
Following policy guidelines are applicable on all organizations applying for NABH accreditations.
S.NoAccreditation stepsApprox. time line
1Submission of application (along with fee amount) + self assessment toolkit + documents + Signed copy of Terms and Conditions.
21) Registration and acknowledgement to HCO along with unique reference no.
2) Reflect same on website.
Within 10 days of receiving application form and fees
3Pre assessmentWithin 3 months of feedeposition
4Take corrective action and send report to NABH secretariat.Within 3 months of date of assessment
5Final assessmentWithin six months of PreAssessment
6Take corrective action on non conformities raised during final assessment and send report to NABH secretariat.Within three months of final assessment
7Review by accreditation committee.
8Verification Assessment (as and if decided by AC)
9Surveillance AssessmentWithin 15-17 months ofAccreditation
10Take corrective action on non conformities raised during surveillance assessment and send report to NABH secretariat.Within 1.5 months of surveillance visit
11ReassessmentBefore 6 months of expiry of accreditation
* Pre Assessment should be within three months of applying for accreditation. It should not be delayed beyond three months. If healthcare provider is not ready for pre-assessment within three months, then accreditation application will be considered cancelled. They have to apply fresh.
** Final Assessment should be within six months of pre assessment. It should not be delayed beyond six months after the pre-assessment. If healthcare provider is not ready for final assessment within six months, then accreditation application will be considered cancelled. They have to apply fresh.