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If you want to Build a new hospital? First refer to NABH,JCI standards..

By Dr.Mahboob Khan Phd

NABH,JCI accreditation has become a buzz word in the social circles of

hospital administrators and quality professionals but hardly anyone pays

attention to the actual NABH,JCI standards. Having visited some

hospitals, old and new, which are planning for the accreditation, one of

the clearly observable deficiencies I came across was the infrastructure.

Old hospitals were built in the times when building laws were not as

stringent as they are now. One can empathize with their administrators

when they say that their hospitals can’t stand NABH,JCI’s scrutiny. But

what I am shocked at is the lack of attention even new hospitals have

paid to the building guidelines.

There is a larger consensus that slowly, but steadily, all healthcare

facilities in our country will have to comply with some or the other

quality accreditation systems, be it NABH,JCI or anything else. Today

NABH,JCI is voluntary in nature. But who knows, tomorrow

government might require certain category of hospitals to mandatorily

go for accreditation. While old hospitals may be able to give some

reasonable excuses, new hospitals will have no excuse to give. And

imagine if medical insurance companies start demanding that all

empanelled hospitals should have NABH,JCI accreditation. Can the new

hospitals and those to come in future miss this opportunity? I am sure

revenue and profitability are on top of their minds and they can’t miss

the cashless pie of the business.

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Therefore, my humble request to such hospitals would be that when they

conceptualize their hospitals and sit with their architects and engineers,

they should first of all put the basic NABH,JCI-related structural

compliances in place. The fancy-stuff can wait. Yes, it has its business

benefits, but it can’t match the benefits that the accreditation can bring.

Go through the latest standards (whichever are applicable to your

facility) of NABH,JCI and decide for yourself how you are going to

design your hospital around these requirements. I am sure there are

sufficient intelligent engineering and architectural consulting firms who

can help you meet both quality and aesthetic requirements in the same

structure. Make NABH,JCI standards as the foundation of your building

design.

For the hospitals which were built recently or even as long as 5-10 years

back should consider giving NABH,JCI standards a try. If you find your

hospital is non-compliant to some of the requirements of NABH,JCI, it’s

still a very cost-effective proposition to make suitable changes (if

possible) in your buildings. It is any day easy to change processes and

manpower behavior to suit the accreditation requirements, but building

of an operational hospital is one thing which cannot be modified easily.