Patients - what does international hospital accreditation mean for you ?
If you are needing to use a hospital overseas as a medical tourist/medical traveller
- It is a good hospital or a bad hospital ?
- Is it a safe hospital ?
- How do you know that they do conduct things in an ethical way ? You may perhaps be concerned about where the donated kidney you are receiving has come from. Do the doctors and nurses do things properly ?
- Will the hospital authorities take your complaints seriously, if things don't go smoothly for you ?
- Will you be able to take effective legal action if you ever needed to do so ? Or would this option be obstructed by the pre-treatment contracts you were obliged to sign ?
- Will you be safe travelling to, and staying in, the country where the hospital is located ? Could you catch malaria ? dengue ? rabies ? HIV ? Chaga's Disease ?........................................
- Is it safe to receive treatment in a hospital in
Are all hospitals in the West good ?
- No
Are all hospitals outside of the West (e.g. Asia, South America,
- No
- But beware of hype
- To choose an example, be particularly suspicious of hospitals which are marketed as having “no MRSA” – it may well be that they just haven’t found it yet, and who wants to be their first case ?! What you need to know is if any particular hospital has efficient systems in place to minimise your chances of catching MRSA.
So should you be checking up on the hospitals being suggested to you ?
- Yes !!!
- Think about it. If you buy a car, surely you want to make sure that the brakes work, and then you would want to make sure that the brakes keep on working ! Your health is even more precious than your car.
- Can you just take someone else's word for how good a particular hospital is ? And who’s word should you take ? A lay friend, a medical tourism agent selling you the service, an insurance company, the overseas hospital that wants you to come to them ?
- Do you want an independent opinion on whether or not a hospital and its staff are up to scratch ?
Does anyone check up on the quality standards of hospitals overseas ?
- Yes
- Independent international healthcare accreditation organisations do so
- Hospital accreditation is all about checking whether or not a hospital complies with an acceptable level of standards, and them making sure that they keep those standards. Unless that is done, you can never entirely trust what is said to you
- However, hospitals will only be accreditated if they have approached one of the international accreditation organisations themselves and taken things forward
- It may also be worth checking with your own government’s relevant departments. In the
Who are the main independent International Healthcare Accreditation organisations ? Are any based locally to where I live and work ?
- If you live in Great Britain and the European Union, a local example would be Trent Accreditation Scheme (TAS)
- If you live in the USA, a local example would be Joint Commission International (JCI)
- If you live in Australia and New Zealand, an local example would be ACHSI
- See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_healthcare_accreditation for further information
There are many different healthcare systems around the world, and no one International Healthcare Accreditation scheme, wherever they happen to be based, can claim to be "the Gold Standard” for all healthcare systems in all parts of the world.
It is surely advisable to retain a healthy degree of scepticism regarding anybody or any organisation which claims to be “the Gold Standard” in any walk of life – the quality of their work should be able to speak for itself, without them having to assault your common sense with the “hard sell” !