The 8th World Accreditation Day----Accreditation Supports Health and Social Care

June 9, 2015 is the 8th World Accreditation Day. The World Accreditation Day is a day jointly established by International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), aiming at promoting the accreditation activities to be widely developed around the world, with its theme of “Accreditation Supports Health and Social Care”.

People pay an increasing attention to the health and social care, along with the global population growth and average lifespan increase. As the basic quality infrastructure of the “Demonstrating Competence and Delivering Trust”, accreditation demonstrates Competence and delivers trust through conformity assessment, which is also a key tool to be available and used by the provider of the health and social care service.

I. Perfecting and extending the accreditation system in the field of health

Up to April 2015, China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) has accredited over 7000 conformity assessment bodies (CAB) and issued over 830,000 certificates in various valid accreditation status. The accreditation system includes three large categories, along with 32 subordinate systems. Several accreditation systems also are closely related to the health and social care.

II. Extending multilateral accreditation to build a wide platform for the testing and inspection results in China

CNAS has joined all multilateral recognition systems in global and Asia-Pacific Region, covering 95% of total global economy. CNAS builds a platform of competence trust for the China’s detection, inspection and accreditation results to obtain wide global recognition, which also helps the health and social care service bodies intensify popularity and promote the competitiveness.

III. Building trust between the consumers and health service bodies

The public hope that the medical and health organization can provide high-quality, reliable, consistent and effective service, and that the hospitals can provide accurate and reliable examination results and it can reduce misdiagnosis rate; meanwhile, they also hope that the personnel information is guaranteed and the complaints can be seriously accepted. The accreditation provides support for the health and social care through the establishing trust and providing guarantee.