After a rigorous three-day survey, Flagstaff Medical Center (FMC) has achieved national accreditation from DNV Healthcare, the newest Medicare-certified hospital accreditation organization. 

FMC made the decision to pursue DNV accreditation to further its commitment to continually improve the quality of care it provides. According to William Bradel, FMC president and chief executive officer, DNV hospital accreditation addresses the demands of quality-driven hospitals that are dedicated to patient-centered care.

“Earning national accreditation through a program such as DNV shows FMC’s commitment to quality, process improvement and providing excellent healthcare,” Bradel said. “Partnering with DNV will help us identify our strengths so we can continue to excel in those areas and assist us in finding opportunities to improve.”

Why Accreditation Matters to Healthcare Consumers
Accreditation can directly affect the quality of hospital care. Why? Because while undergoing the accreditation process, a hospital makes critical decisions about how it cares for patients as well as how it stores medications, allocates nurse staffing, and administers its policies and procedures.

By law, hospitals must be compliant with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Conditions of Participation to be reimbursed for care provided to patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Hospitals can verify they meet these CMS standards in one of two ways:

• They can choose to be accredited by one of three private organizations to which CMS has given the authority to verify conditions of participation: DNV, Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the American Osteopathic Association.
• They can be certified by CMS itself, usually through state health departments. Most recently, FMC was surveyed by the Arizona Department of Health Services on behalf of CMS.

The big difference in the DNV accreditation program is its emphasis on continual improvement and innovation. Historically, accreditation has been a rigid inspection not designed to promote new ideas within the hospital. DNV’s program, while being extremely rigorous, taps into the know-how of the hospital’s caregivers, techs and administrators to develop best practices.

“Our approach to accreditation acknowledges that every hospital is different; its needs and challenges are unique to the community it serves,” says Patrick Horine, senior vice president of accreditation for DNV Healthcare. “Accreditation had become a cookie-cutter formula for inspecting every hospital the same way. That tends to demoralize the staff and mask bad habits that could easily be improved if you just asked people how they could do things better. We hold hospitals accountable to very high standards, but we also empower them to innovate.”

DNV Healthcare Inc. is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Det Norske Veritas, a global independent foundation dedicated to safeguarding life, property and the environment. Since receiving its authorization from CMS in 2008, DNV’s process has quickly become recognized for taking a collaborative approach to working with hospitals on quality improvement. That commitment to working together is why more than 200 hospitals around the country have chosen DNV for accreditation. Eleven hospitals in Arizona have chosen DNV for their accreditation including Flagstaff Medical Center; Casa Grande Regional Medical Center; Florence Community Healthcare; Scottsdale Healthcare’s Thompson Peak, Shea and Osborn Medical Centers; St. Luke's Medical Center and Behavioral Health Center; Mountain Vista Medical Center; Maricopa Integrated Health System and Verde Valley Medical Center.

DNV Healthcare’s hospital accreditation program is the only program that integrates the ISO 9001 quality management system with Medicare’s Conditions of Participation. ISO 9001 is recognized by businesses around the world as the benchmark for continual quality improvement. It provides a tried and tested framework and systematic approach to managing an organization’s processes so they consistently meet their customers' expectations. By integrating ISO 9001 standards with Medicare compliance standards, DNV’s hospital accreditation program emphasizes standardized processes, continual improvement and innovation. Partnering with DNV allows hospitals to worry less about the accreditation survey itself and spend more time on what matters most, like patient safety, infection prevention and other key challenges. Hospitals accredited by DNV have three years from their first survey to become compliant with the ISO 9001standards to maintain their accreditation with DNV.

“DNV is an impressive system that focuses on quality and patient safety,” Bradel said. “They are very thorough, but the survey doesn’t feel like an inspection. Rather, it is more of a partnership that involves all levels of staff working together. With DNV, we can simultaneously meet CMS requirements and implement the ISO 9001 Quality Management System. The DNV program holds us to an even higher standard than other survey programs and is a win-win for us, our patients and our community.”

For more information about DNV Healthcare, visit dnvaccreditation.com.