Accrediting Indian hospitals

Assuaging concerns about quality, treatment standards, and outcomes is one of the biggest challenges facing off-shore medical facilities eager to extract a fraction of US health care dollars. That and figuring out how to make a Mumbai hospital look and feel like the one just down the street from the medical tourist’s neighborhood.
Into this business opportunity (the former, not the latter) has stepped an Australian certification body, the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards. Working with two Indian groups, the Quality Council of India (QCI) and the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), the Aussies will help revise national credentialing and standards for Indian health care facilities.
The standards are likely to closely parallel those developed by another body, the ISQua, The International Society for Quality in Health Care. ISQua includes board members from URAC, JCAHO, and accrediting organizations from other countries, and is operational in 70 nations.
As healthcare goes global, and American companies and individuals seek to reduce expenses while assuring quality, expect that we’ll hear more about health plans that include first-dollar coverage for services rendered at ISQua certified facilities.
What does this mean for you?
The world is getting smaller, flatter (thanks Tom Friedman) and more competitive, and providers who ignore competition from overseas do so at their peril.