Home > Programs

Priority Program 7: Accreditation

The primary objective of the project is to provide Health Ministers with an alternative model of accreditation that can be applied across all sectors of the health care system.

UPDATE: Review of National Safety and Quality Accreditation Standards May 2008

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) is pleased to announce that on 18 April 2008 the Australian Health Ministers’ Conference endorsed the principles of the Commission’s Alternative Model of Safety and Quality Accreditation. The Final Report on the Review of National Safety and Quality Accreditation Standards (PDF 329 KB), Proposals on an Alternative Model of Safety and Quality Accreditation (PDF 690 KB) and Outcomes of Health Ministers 18 April 2008 Meeting regarding Safety and Quality Accreditation Reforms (PDF 18 KB) are publicly available for download.

Health Ministers have asked that progress be made on phase one of implementation of the reform package, including:

Development of a preliminary set of Australian Health Standards (AHS) and exploration of options for their mandatory implementation
Determining processes, costs and possible funding options to implementing the Alternative Model for Safety and Quality Accreditation
A review and analysis of State and Territory private health facility licensing
A review of overlaps and potential linkages between accreditation and the contractual obligations between States and Territory health services and health insurance funds, including opportunities to streamline safety and quality performance reporting in this domain.

The Commission has agreed to provide regular progress reports to Health Ministers during the first phase of implementation.

The Commission commenced its review of National Safety and Quality Accreditation Standards in November 2006 with the release of a discussion paper endorsed by Health Ministers. The paper was the basis for the first phase of stakeholder consultations and detailed issues with the current safety and quality accreditation system and its standards. In addition the paper proposed a package of reforms for accreditation including a national set of standards by which health services would be assessed.

The first phase of consultation and the information collected resulted in the Report on Initial Stakeholder Consultation which was endorsed by Health Ministers at their meeting in July 2007. Following this, an alternative model of accreditation was developed by the Commission as the basis of further consultation. The alternative model developed directly from the information collected in the first phase of consultations, proposes a substantial reform of the accreditation system that has the potential for far-reaching change.

In August 2007, a second phase of consultation commenced. This phase of consultation comprised a series of stakeholder forums with those groups directly affected by the proposed alternative model, a public call for comment on the Consultation Paper: An Alternative Model for Safety and Quality Accreditation of Health Care via written submission and a National Workshop at the end of November 2007.

Review of National Safety and Quality Accreditation Standards

Top of Page

Page currency, Latest update: 16 May, 2008

If you are having difficulty downloading the PDF document(s) please send an email to mail@safetyandquality.gov.au.

To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is available free of charge from Adobe's website.