Friday, August 15, 2008 Local hospital seeks accreditation to attract, serve foreign patients
ALTHOUGH an international accreditation will make it easy for local hospitals to market themselves globally, a hospital official believes it is not the key to success in medical tourism.
“Accreditation is (rather) a tool to find out how good we are as an international hospital,” said Oscar Tuason, administrator of Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital.
Tuason, also president of the Cebu Health and Wellness Council (CHWC), said Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital does not have plans to secure an accreditation with Joint Commission International.
JCI, according to its website, is the “largest not-for-profit” accreditor of health care organizations in the United States. It surveys nearly 20,000 health care programs through a voluntary accreditation process. Its international accreditation program was launched in 1999.
American standards
“We are not interested in JCI. For the most part, it is used as a marketing tool. We are not pursuing to be accredited by JCI because (we suspect) they will impose American standards on us. They will come in and say: ‘These are our standards. Either you meet them or you will not get our accreditation,’” Tuason explained.
Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital, in focusing more on the European market, is more interested on getting accredited with Trent.
The scheme, which has been developed by practitioners and managers from within the former Trent National Health Service Region, primarily aims “to provide a self assessment tool through which organizations can assess and continue to develop and improve their services by reference to external standards,” the Trent website stated.
“Trent is more down-to-earth. They inspect the hospital, they acquire knowledge of the prevailing locale, compare it with international standards, and sit down with us and tell us what we need to work on or improve,” Tuason said.
He added that the Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital is already working toward becoming internationally accredited through Trent.
Since Trent surveyors had visited the hospital as part of the first step of the scheme, Cebu Doctors’ hopes to get the accreditation before the end of this year.
Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital is a member of the CHWC, a private-public sector coalition of industry stakeholders who are planning make Cebu a world-class destination for medical and wellness tourism in Asia by 2010. (NRC)
