The Health Care Accreditation Council (HCAC) is an independent, non-profit health care accreditation organization that was established in Jordan in 2007 as part of the National Health Strategy 2006-2010. The HCAC was created as a national resource to help raise the level of health care quality and patient safety in Jordanian hospitals and primary health care facilities. HCAC provides a range of performance assessment and quality improvement programs and services, including health care facility accreditation, certification of surveyors, accreditation preparedness and training courses, and regional consultation services.
HCAC issued its first accreditation standards for hospitals in 2007. The HCAC Hospital Accreditation Standards were approved by the Minister of Health in September 2007 and were accredited by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) in December 2007. The second edition of the HCAC Hospital Accreditation Standards were approved by the HCAC Board in November 2008 and became effective 1 July 2009. Currently, HCAC is providing accreditation based on compliance with the second edition of the HCAC Hospital Accreditation Standards. HCAC's Surveyor Certification Course was also accredited by ISQua on October 1, 2009.
For more information on HCAC, visit its web site at the link below. The web site is in English and Arabic.
Quality design is the systematic creation of new services or processes or the redesign of existing ones. It incorporates features that meet the needs of internal and external clients while taking into account the resources available. In healthcare, external clients include the individuals who use specific services, their caretakers, and their families, but may also include members of the larger community. Internal clients could include healthcare providers, community-based workers, support staff, supervisors, or managers. Quality design is undertaken by a team that can include both internal and external clients of the service to be designed. The Quality Assurance Project has developed a quality design methodology that teams can use to select a process and then: Identify all clients and their needs; Clearly set objectives for the design; Create a design that addresses those needs; Implement and monitor the new design. This case study describes how quality design principles were used to design the Salt Family Health Model Center, the first such center developed in Jordan. (excerpt)