Hospital accreditation: lessons from low- and middle-income countries

The growth of accreditation programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) provides important examples of innovations in leadership, governance and mission which could be adopted in developed countries. While these accreditation programs in LMICs follow the basic structure and process of accreditation systems in the developed world, with written standards and an evaluation by independent surveyors, they differ in important ways. Their focus is primarily on improving overall care country-wide while supporting the weakest facilities. In the developed world accreditation efforts tend to focus on identifying the best institutions as those are typically the only ones who can meet stringent and difficult evaluative criteria.