Accreditation for Surgical Facilities
The accreditation of surgical facilities allows these facilities to demonstrate that they are able to meet official regulatory requirements and standards in safety and quality. Accredited facilities meet strict national standards for equipment, operating room safety, personnel, and surgeon credentials; for instance, these facilities are required to provide anesthesia only through board-certified or board-eligible anesthesiologists or certified nurse anesthetists, to adhere to all federal laws and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations, and to maintain a staff of certified professionals (surgical technicians, registered nurses, or licensed practical nurses) who are trained in Advanced Cardiac Life Support and who can recognize the signs of cardiac or respiratory distress. Accredited surgical facilities have been found, through research and the compilation of reporting, to have an extremely low rate of serious peri- or post-operative complications (less than half of one percent of cases), an extremely low mortality rate (less than one in 57,000 cases), and overall lower costs. Due to these benefits, patients are generally encouraged to seek out accredited facilities for their surgical operations, increasing the incentive for surgical facilities to seek out accreditation.1
The requirements for obtaining accreditation differs based on the organization which is providing the accreditation.2 In the United States, facilities providing care to Medicare beneficiaries must meet Medicare standards and be approved by the federal government. Some other accreditation organizations include The Joint Commission, an independent, not-for-profit organization which accredits and certifies more than 22,000 health organizations in the United States; the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC), which offers Ambulatory Care Accreditation for medical care provided on an outpatient basis; and the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities, Inc. (AAAASF), which develops and implements standards for medical competence and patient safety in ambulatory surgical settings through their national accreditation program.3
According to a survey conducted by the Surgical Review Corporation (SRC), another independent accreditation program for surgical facilities, the benefits of accreditation include fewer surgical complications, decreased overall costs for the center, improved efficacy and efficiency, improved patient safety, increased team cooperation, increased budget for the center, increased patient awareness, increased patient satisfaction, higher patient volume, increased referrals, a marketing advantage, professional recognition and distinction, and a transformative process for the team.4 These benefits can be reasonably applied to other, official accreditation programs as well. This means, most importantly, that the process and implementation of accreditation is not only beneficial for the patients who will receive treatment from surgical facilities (for whom the standards for accreditation will ensure that the facility adheres to an acceptable level of safety and efficacy) but also for the surgical facilities themselves, which will most likely enjoy a greater level of trust from their patients—and thus, the marketing advantage, increased patient awareness and satisfaction, and higher patient volume discussed by the SRC—as a result of being an accredited facility.
References
(1) Accredited Facilities | Patient Safety | ASPS. https://www.plasticsurgery.org/patient-safety?sub=Accredited+Facilities
(2) About Accreditation – ACHC. https://www.achc.org/about-accreditation.
(3) Accreditation Organizations – Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA). https://www.ascassociation.org/asca/aboutus/relatedorganizations/accreditationorganizations.
(4) SRC- Accreditation for Hospitals & Surgical Facilities. https://www.surgicalreview.org/facilities