Modern Healthcare October 27, 2008 DNV Healthcare - (Page 4) Cover Story Medicare’s conditions of participation through DNV’s accreditation process, dubbed the National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations, or NIAHO. As they meet requirements through NIAHO, hospitals also will be complying with ISO 9001, one component within the family of ISO 9000 standards that form a quality-management system. While hospitals will be complying with the ISO 9001 standard by following DNV’s process, actually receiving the ISO 9001 certificate is a voluntary option and will be a separate processing fee of between $2,000 and $3,000. Joint Commission annual fees are based on the size and the service complexity of individual hospitals and range from $1,780 to $36,845. DNV says its pricing is “comparable” to the commission’s over a three-year period. Yehuda Dror, president of DNV Healthcare, said he wants hospitals to view tion, hospital staff members become trained as auditors so they can continuously monitor their quality operations, while DNV auditors conduct annual surveys. The goal is to have staff working on the same path and ensuring objectives are being met without restricting the methods used to achieve those objectives, he said. “It’s very difficult when you have a proscriptive system,” he said. Allowing for more flexibility in the survey process will give hospitals the opportunity to develop tailored quality systems that meet their needs, said Jim Levett, chief medical officer of Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, a practice with more than 40 doctors that is ISO 9001-certified. Levett is chairman of the standards and appeals board for DNV. “There’s an opportunity for hospitals to continue to meet Medicare conditions of participation but develop programs that work for them.” << Alvey: More competition is a good thing for hospitals. Winstead: Joint Commission has better name recognition. the accreditation process as a strategic tool. “For them, it should be the way they do business.” The NIAHO uses hospitals’ own practices as the base of its written policies and procedures. Hospital leaders decide what to focus on and write their own plans of action, and DNV works with the facility to ensure it is following its written plan, Dror said. In addi- Posted with permission from Modern Healthcare. Copyright Crain Communications Inc. 2008 #1-25337720 Managed by The YGS Group, 717.399.1900. For more information visit www.theYGSgroup.com/reprints. http://www.theYGSgroup.com/reprints
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