Promoting patients' rights through hospital accreditation.

Legislation and accreditation standards both address patients' rights. The two approaches differ in important ways; they should not be seen as competing but as complementing efforts. Laws define minimum standards, whereas accreditation standards describe optimal performance; laws focus on the rights, whereas accreditation standards also point out ways in which hospitals may act to deliver these rights, which both serves to help hospitals implementing the rights and to standardize the measures taken across hospitals. A recent Israeli study underpins this view, but also highlights that international accreditation standards and national legislation may differ, when it comes to the definition of the actual rights.