National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) and Becton Dickinson (BD) India a medical technology company are launching NABH-Safe-I Infection Control Accreditation Programme for hospitals in Karnataka. This initiative comes at a time when building a safe healthcare environment in hospitals with effective infection control practices and promoting continuous quality improvement to ensure quality care for patients is becoming crucial.

With this, Karnataka becomes the fourth state in the country after Kerala, Punjab and Maharashtra to adopt this programme in its effort to strengthen health systems. In the city of Bangalore only 17 hospitals are NABH accredited and 13 hospitals are in different phases of accreditation.

For Safe-I NABH infection control program, several hospitals have shown their interest and have submitted their applications in Karnataka including Sagar Hospital, Vikram Hospital and Deepak Hospital.

According to Dr KK Kalra, CEO, NABH said that 201 large hospitals are already accredited and nearly 700 hospitals in various phases of accreditation. Patient safety is a fundamental principal of heath care and NABH-Safe-I accreditation aims to improve quality of health care services and ensure patient safety. Large number of hospitals find accreditation process very difficult and hesitate to take initiatives for compliance to NABH quality standards. Hospital associated infections (HAIs) are the biggest threat for patient safety globally.

NABH and BD had entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in 2012 to support hospitals in attaining quality-of-care standards for infection control. In last 18 months, 50 hospitals across Kerala and Punjab have been certified with NABH Safe-I accreditation successfully.

Now the Safe-I certification is a precursor to preparing HCOs (healthcare organizations) or SHCOs (small healthcare organizations) for NABH accreditation. Through its experienced field force, BD is guiding applicant hospitals toward NABH-Safe-I preparation and other relevant training and development workshops.

“We are glad that the certification process is moving at a good pace and is becoming a choice for many hospitals across states who are eager to improve the quality of patient care,” stated Dr Bhaskar J Sonowal, technical advisor- Infection Control and Patient Safety BD India.