Systematic review
Effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals
Systematic review
|Updated
This review is an update of an earlier review where we aim to present available documentation of about the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.
Key message
This review is an update of an earlier review where we aim to present available documentation of about the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.
We searched for systematic reviews and primary studies with the following designs: randomized controlled trials, controlled before and after studies, and interrupted time series. We included studies regarding all types of hospitals as long as the intervention included certification or accreditation.
The literature search identified 522 unique references. None of them fulfilled our inclusion criteria regarding study design.
There is a lack of documentation to assess the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.
Summary
Background
Suggestions have been made that health institutions in Norway should be certified. Processes needed to initiate and endorse certification and accreditations are work and resource intensive. The Department of Health and the Directorate of Health have asked for an update of the report 27-2006 (Effekt av ISO-sertifisering og akkreditering av sykehus) to be available for consideration.
This review is an update of the earlier review with the aim to present available documentation of about the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.
Methods
We searched for the time period after the search of the previous review for systematic reviews and primary studies with the following designs: randomized controlled trials, controlled before and after studies, and interrupted time series in the following databases:
- The Cochrane Library (Issue 3, 2009)
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
- Database of Abstracts of reviews of Effect (DARE)
- Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA)
- CENTRAL
- MEDLINE
- EMBASE
- CRD
We included studies regarding all types of hospitals as long as the intervention included certification or accreditation.
Results
The literature search identified 522 unique references. None of them fulfilled our inclusion criteria regarding study design.
We did not find any studies of the effect of certification or accreditation of hospitals.
Discussion
Neither this new update nor the previous report on certification and accreditation of hospitals was able to find studies that fulfilled our inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria for study design were wide for a question of effect, but we did not find any.
Conclusion
There is a lack of documentation to assess the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.
There is a need for well planned and controlled studies of the effect of certification and accreditation of hospitals.