Role of Accreditation in Healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Role of Accreditation in Healthcare - Essay Example Research shows that accredited health facilities offer a high level of patient care and service than unaccredited institutions. In essence therefore, by accrediting health facilities, government and registered healthcare accreditation bodies are offering patients with a map on where and where not to seek treatment. Without accreditation, people seek healthcare services would easily fall for quacks, and in the process endanger their health. The second role of accreditation is that it acts as a basis for protecting and fighting for patient rights (Manley et al, 2008). What this means is that in case health provision goes wrong and harms a patient’s health, the patient has a basis for seeking legal redress. For instance, a patient can seek legal help through the accreditation body. Alternatively, the patient can enjoin the accreditation body, when seeking legal redress from an accredited healthcare organization. Without accreditation and clear cut rules on how healthcare facilities should handle their patients, it would be difficult for a patient to seek legal redress in case something goes wrong. This is because; there would be no set benchmarks against which, health care service is measured against. The third role of accreditation in healthcare is statistics, budgeting and government fiscal planning. What this means is that through accreditation, the government is able to collect variable data on the current status of the healthcare sector (Sears et al, 2015). For instance, the government can easily collect data from accredited institutions on the prevalence of lifestyle diseases like diabetes. It can then act on such data and come up with measures for combating such diseases. Without accreditation, it would be difficult to know how many healthcare facilities are in operation leave alone collect valuable healthcare data from them.