Hospital accreditation in Latin America.

1 Institute for Technical Cooperation in Health, Potomac, Maryland, United States of America. Send correspondence to: Humberto M. Novaes, INTECH, Inc., 12 Pasture Brook Court, Potomac, Maryland 20854-2954, United States of America; telephone: (301) 610-9620; fax: (301) 610-9621; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Case Western Reserve University, Medical School, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America. The recession of the 1980s in Latin America resulted in the deterioration of the social sector and, therefore, hospitals. To remedy this situation and strive for an acceptable level of quality, in the 1990s many countries in Latin America began to implement hospital accreditation processes, with support from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) (1). These Latin American efforts built on the successes in the United States of America of the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. This organization has worked since 1951 to improve the quality of health care in the United States. A number of other countries have established hospital accreditation systems, including Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and Thailand. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are some 16 000 hospitals, with a total of around one million beds. Nearly 70% of those hospitals have fewer than 70 beds each (2). Although Latin America has many prominent public and private medical centers comparable to the most advanced anywhere in the world, many other Latin American hospitals would not pass an evaluation review for a minimum level of quality. In addition, many Latin American hospitals have great variations in quality among their services. Fortunately, accreditation can often be achieved without major investments in infrastructure, which is an important consideration for the many nations in Latin America carrying heavy loads of foreign and internal debt.