Manipal Hospital has been accredited by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH) for the delivery of high quality of patient care in more than 50 specialities.

The Bangalore facility was the first Indian multi-super speciality hospital to attain ISO certification for clinical, nursing, diagnostics and allied areas. It was also the first ever recipient of the Golden Peacock National Quality Award.

R Basil, MD and CEO of Manipal Health Systems and Dr Murali Srinivas, Consultant Neurology and Advisor Quality at Manipal Hospital Bangalore received the accreditation, instituted by Quality Council of India (QCI) from Ashwani Kumar, Minister of State, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in New Delhi.

NABH is a constituent board of QCI, set up to establish and operate accreditation programme for healthcare organizations. The board is structured to cater to the much desired needs of the consumers and to set benchmarks for progress of the health industry.

In a NABH accredited hospital, there is strong focus on patient rights and benefits, patient safety, control and prevention of infections in hospitals and practising good patient care protocols like special care for vulnerable groups, critically ill patients and better and controlled clinical outcome.

Manipal Hospital with its system-based operations and structured process improvement programme, met all the criteria set by NABH. The assessment of a hospital is done against 500 criteria set by it. The NABH standards relate to the local culture and systems, yet at the same time, are benchmarked with the best international standards.

"To enable us go through the NABH assessment, we involved our entire hospital team to drive an effective quality management programme on an ongoing basis. No outside consultant or agency was hired for the assessment. The accreditation process had been developed and implemented in-house by Manipal Hospital. Strong emphasis was laid on strengthening policies, procedures and protocols, reviewing performance through patient satisfaction, conducting audits and training staff including clinicians, nursing, management and outsourced staff, informed the Manipal Hospital chief.

Manipal group offers tertiary, secondary and primary healthcare delivery services from 17 hospitals, 9 primary care clinics and 55 community Health programmes. With over 7000 beds, 1700 doctors, 15 lakh out-patients and 4 lakh inpatients annually, it is one among the largest healthcare delivery systems in Asia, according to the healthcare provider.