Health Care Accreditation

Fundamentally healthcare and hospital accreditation is about improving how care is delivered to patients and the quality of the care they receive. Accreditation has been defined as “A self-assessment and external peer assessment process used by health care organizations to accurately assess their level of performance in relation to established standards and to implement ways to continuously improve”.

Accreditation systems are structured so as to provide objective measures for the external evaluation of quality and quality management. Accreditation schemes usually focus primarily on the patient and their pathway through the healthcare system – this includes how they access care, how they are cared for after discharge from hospital, and the quality of the services provided for them. In addition to care-of-patient standards, other important standards/parameters in an accreditation process evaluates the competency, training and education of staff, credentials, clinical governance and audit, patient rights and grievances mechanisms, facility and medical equipment safety, research activity, ethical issues, etc. These measurements serve to assess in a systematic and comprehensive way the standards of professional performance in a healthcare facility.

In recognizing the desires of our patients to seek further reassurance in knowing that ISEC is committed to excellence and has a healthcare delivery system that conforms to international standards, ISEC had voluntarily embarked on an accreditation programme by the Joint Commission International (JCI) in 2008.

Joint Commission International (JCI)

Joint Commission International, or JCI, is an international subsidiary of he Joint Commisision, established to survey hospitals outside of the USA in 1997.

The Joint Commission, formerly the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), is a United States-based non-profit organization. The mission of this organization is “To continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations.”

The Joint Commission’s predecessor organization was the result of a hospital reform advocate’s, Dr Ernest Codman, effort to promote hospital reform based on outcomes management in patient care in USA. Codman’s efforts led to the founding of the American College of Surgeons and its Hospital Standardization Program. In 1951, a new entity, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals was created by merging of the Hospital Standardization Program with similar ones run by the American College of Physicians, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the Canadian Medical Association. From 1981 onwards the organisation was re-named the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and is currently known as The Joint Commission.

What ISEC, being now JCI accredited, means to our patient

ISEC is pleased to announce that it has obtained the JCI accreditation in February 2009. This makes ISEC the first eye care centre to obtain international accreditation in the South East Asia and Far East Region.

As the accreditation process is designed to create a culture of safety and quality within an organisation that strives to continually improve patient care processes and results, being accredited gives you the reassurance that our patients can expect the best available care when they utilise the clinical services in ISEC.