Health service accreditation as a predictor of clinical and organisational performance: a blinded, random, stratified study.

Background: Despite the widespread use of accreditation in many countries, and prevailing beliefs that accreditation is associated with variables contributing to clinical care and organisational outcomes, little systematic research has been conducted to examine its validity as a predictor of healthcare performance.

Objective: To determine whether accreditation performance is associated with self-reported clinical performance and independent ratings of four aspects of organisational performance.

Design: Independent blinded assessment of these variables in a random, stratified sample of health service organisations.

A prospective, multi-method, multi-disciplinary, multi-level, collaborative, social-organisational design for researching health sector accreditation [LP0560737].

Background: Accreditation has become ubiquitous across the international health care landscape. Award of full accreditation status in health care is viewed, as it is in other sectors, as a valid indicator of high quality organisational performance. However, few studies have empirically demonstrated this assertion.