WASHINGTON - The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has approved the first new U.S. hospital accreditation organization in more than 30 years.
DNV Healthcare Inc., a Houston-based division of the Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas, will immediately begin determining if American hospitals are in compliance with the Medicare Conditions of Participation.
DNV joins the Joint Commission and the American Osteopathic Association as the only national hospital accreditors approved by CMS. The company's “deeming authority” to accredit hospitals will run through Sept. 26, 2012.
As part of the CMS approval process, DNV's accreditation program – called NIAHO – was implemented in hospitals across the country and demonstrated its effectiveness to U.S. healthcare officials.
NIAHO is the acronym for National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations. To date, 22 U.S. hospitals have been accredited by NIAHO.
"The entire market has reached a turning point," said Yehuda Dror, president of DNV Healthcare. "Now hospitals can choose to integrate proven quality systems into an annual accreditation process that is less complicated to administer. Based on its design and feedback from DNV's currently accredited hospitals, we believe NIAHO will have a positive and measurable impact on patient safety, financial performance and the overall quality of healthcare services."
DNV's NIAHO program is the first hospital accreditation program in the United States that integrates the internationally recognized ISO 9001 Quality Management System with the Medicare Conditions of Participation. DNV officials claim it is the only hospital accreditation program that requires continual quality improvement.
Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety for the American Hospital Association, said having a choice of accrediting organizations could be good for both patients and hospitals.
“Both The Joint Commission and DNV Healthcare will work with hospitals to reach their goal of quality improvement – they’ll just take different paths to get there,” she said. “We look forward to learning more about DNV Healthcare’s approach and how well it works to help hospitals achieve better quality.”
Atrium Medical Center, a 300-bed regional hospital in southwestern Ohio, was one of the first hospitals to deploy the DNV NIAHO program.
"We wanted an accreditation program that could help us take our quality programs to the next level," said Robyn Myers, Atrium’s director of quality and accreditation. "DNV NIAHO looks at every area of the hospital, not just clinical services. It's a more comprehensive approach."
Next year Atrium will complete a transition to electronic health records. Myers said that was another reason the hospital is pleased with NIAHO.
"We've had prior experience with ISO 9001 and it makes a big difference. It creates consistency and structure throughout our entire organization," said Myers. "ISO is actually helping us make the switch to electronic records. We have better control of our business processes and that allows us to adapt more quickly to changes in CMS quality measures."
Dror said all DNV surveyors have been cross-trained as ISO 9001 lead auditors, which he said made them "unique in the industry."
"It's not just their surveying skills, it's their collaborative approach that makes the difference," he said. "Accreditation surveys in the past have become somewhat combative. They don't have to be. Surveyors can be collaborative and still hold hospitals accountable."