What is the Importance of NABH Accreditation for Dental Clinics and Hospitals

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In India, Heath System currently operates within an environment of rapid social, economic and technical changes. Such changes raise the concern for the quality of health care and same is true for dental care. Accreditation would be the single most important approach for improving the quality of Dental Facility. Accreditation is an incentive to improve patient option of choosing a Dental Facility. Accreditation system ensures that Dental Facility, whether public or private, national or expatriate, play their expected roles in national health system.

Dentistry is a very significantly large and growing industry in India with high level of competition too due to increasing dentist/population ratios and an all-round need for improved dental health.

Dental Clinics can be likened as small business establishments in which the Dentist not only treats patients, but also addresses concerns such as customer satisfaction, paperwork processing, patient scheduling, hiring, retaining and compensating the Staff etc. 

NABH provides accreditation to Dental Facility in a non-discriminatory manner regardless of their ownership, legal status, size and degree of independence. The applicant Dental Facility must have conducted self-assessment against NABH standards after implementing for at least 3 months before submission of application and must ensure that it complies with NABH Standards.

Quality Council of India (QCI) and its National Accreditation Board for Hospital and Healthcare providers [NABH] have designed scalable standards and objective elements for accreditation of Dental Care providers. NABH is an Institutional & Board member of the International Society for Quality in Health Care [ISQUA]; any efforts to comply and have this tag will be a big boost for the Dental facility and shall build the confidence nationally, internationally as well as internally and externally.

Accreditation:
A process of external review of the quality of the health care being provided by a health care organization. This is generally carried out by a non-governmental organization. It also represents the outcome of the review and the decision that an eligible organization meets an applicable set of standards.

Assessment:
All activities including history taking, physical examination, laboratory investigations that contribute towards determining the prevailing clinical status of the patient.
Definition:
NABH Standards for Dental Healthcare service provider prepared by technical committee contains complete set of standards for evaluation of Dental Healthcare service provider for grant of accreditation. The standards provide framework for quality of care for patients and quality improvement for Dental Healthcare service provider. The standards help to build a quality culture at all level and across all the function of Dental Healthcare service provider.

Need of Quality Standards for Dental Set up:

Quality is the need of the present time with development of technology and availability of new equipment, Dentistry is becoming more and more effective but along with that unsafe. If as professionals we stick to basic standards, we can have safe practices and deliver high quality treatment. Introducing quality management systems are very important and the standards help us to achieve it.

 Importance of Dental Accreditation:
  • Raises confidence amongst International patients to avail dental facility services and Promotes options for Dental Tourism as Symbol of trust
  • Control and prevention of infections
  • Stimulates continuous improvement.
  • Enables the Dental facility in demonstrating commitment to quality of care.
  • Defined protocols lead to quick responses.
  • Practicing good patient-specific protocols
  • Raises community confidence in the services provided.
  • Better prepared for any litigation.
NABH provides accreditation to Dental Facility in order to ensure patient safety and desired outcomes. For convenience of accreditation, NABH has classified Dental Health Service Providers (DHSP) as follows:
Section A
Category 1: DHSPs associated with hospitals without inpatient facility
Category 2: DHSPs associated with hospitals/educational institutes with inpatient facility

Section B
Category 3: DHSPs with 1-2 chairs
Category 4: DHSPs with 3-8 chairs
Category 5: DHSPs with 9 and above chairs
Outline of NABH Standards for Dental Facilities:
Patient Centered Standards:
  1. Access, Assessment and continuity of Care (AAC)
  2. Care of Patient (COP)
  3. Patient Rights and Education (PRE)
  4. Management of Dental Material Medical and Equipment
  5. Management of Dental Materials (MDM)
  6. Management of Dental Instruments and Equipment (MIE)
  7. Management of Medication (MOM)
  8. Infection Control (IC)
Organization Centered Standards
  1. Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)
  2. Responsibility of Management (ROM)
  3. Facility Management and Safety (FMS)
  4. Human Resource Management (HRM)
  5. Information Management System (IMS)


Quality Indicators: The indicators shall be indicated in both rates/percentages/ratios and absolute numbers.

Indicator frequency has been described under:
Continuous: 
Implies data/reports needs to be monitored on daily basis for all events/episodes/activities and analysed at least on monthly basis followed by corrective and prevention actions.

Periodic monthly basis: 
The data needs to be compiled and analysed at least on monthly basis followed by corrective and preventive actions based on sample size.

Periodic with audits been done at least quarterly:
This type of indicators can be reviewed on periodic basis using well designed audits with a goal to improve the patient care and patient safety. The audits can be done through open and/or closed files using a suggestive sample size as defined in NABH Standards. 



Written by:

Dr. Praveen Bajpai

Director of Ingenious Healthcare Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
Founder of Skill Sathi


MBA in Hospital administration, PG Diploma in Quality Accreditation, PG Diploma in Medico Legal System, M. Phil in Hospital Mgmt. from BITS Pilani, P.hD in Management, Certified NABH Auditor, Certified NABL Auditor, Certified Auditor for Clinical Audits, Green Belt in Six Sigma, Certified in Hospital Infection Control Practices, Certified trainer for International Patient Safety Goals, Certified Auditor for JCI 7th Edition Standards 

www.skillsathi.in 




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