Professional Standard, Accreditation, and Core Competencies of Healthcare Administrators

Introduction

MacVean and Spindler (2012) defined a professional standard as the adherence of the professional ethical code. Healthcare administrators can apply professional standards in organizations to enhance the relationship among colleagues, patients and other members within the organization. Professional standards make the medicine practice more efficient and effective because it incorporates formal expectations among healthcare practitioners, making them maintain desirable humanistic qualities that values the patient's interest such as integrity, confidentiality, caring, excellent communication skills, sincerity, punctuality, devotion, and much more.

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On the other hand, healthcare accreditation refers to the process of verifying organizations operation to ensure they meet particular standards. Accreditation involves the act of granting approval or disapproval. Accreditation plays a vital role in health care because it helps control the facility's performance and ensure the organizations maintain high safety standards while disseminating healthcare services to patients.

Core competencies refer to the distinguishing complementary skills among healthcare professionals that determine how they deliver services to patients. Core competencies play a vital role in healthcare because it aims to ensure both clinical and non-clinical staff maintains the patient's safety. Examples of core competencies include maintaining a high degree of interpersonal communication, having elaborate clinical knowledge, patient care, professionalism in handling patients, and much more.

The Relationship Between the Three Topics

All three topics aim to improve the patient's safety. Professional standards involve the application of the ethical code to ensure a patient's safety is given the top priority. Professional standards incorporate rules or attributes that make healthcare practitioners maintain the highest standards in service delivery. A healthcare practitioner with well-developed professional standards have qualities such as enhancing a higher degree of integrity, confidentiality, caring for the sick patient, excellent communication skills, sincerity, punctuality, devotion, and much more. On the other hand, core competency focus on the interpersonal skills which ensures that the safety practices are incorporated by a healthcare provider purposely to maintain a patient's safety. Healthcare accreditation also ensures that the patient's safety is maintained by ensuring healthcare facilities maintain high safety standards in service delivery.

Moreover, all these three topics focus on the best programs or practices that can help a healthcare facility achieve success while ensuring quality and patient safety. Professional standards and core competencies focus on particular attributes that must be incorporated by a healthcare administrator to provide that both clinical and non-clinical staff are held accountable for their actions. Accreditation ensures potential improvements are made in a healthcare facility to make sure high safety standards are maintained while disseminating healthcare services to patients (Alkhenizan & Shaw, 2011).

Professional standards, accreditation, and core competencies also support ethical behavior between health care executives, employees, and patients. In the long run, such a move ensures maintenance of respect to the patient. Professional standards dictate that healthcare practitioners should have some outstanding human qualities towards patients such as caring, soft communication with patients, and maintaining the patient's privacy and confidential information. In accreditation, patients are shown respect when the facility meet particular standards, such as having appropriate tools to treat patients who suffer from different illnesses. Core competencies also aim to show respect to patients by making a healthcare practitioner have outstanding interpersonal skills such as, communicating to the patient with sincerity and taking into account the patient's ethnicity, cultural beliefs, and religious belief.

Conclusion

According to the American College of Health Executives, (n.d.), to incorporate patient's safety and ethical practices that values patient's interest, there is need to mobilize clinical and non-clinical staff to set standards and expectations aimed at improving the patient's safety. It implies that healthcare administrators have a role in encouraging their team to consider safety issues within the facility. To implement this practice, a healthcare administrator can collaborate with certifying and credentialing bodies to examine healthcare practitioners and identify their competence in safety practices and commitment to the patient's safety. Healthcare administrators can also set a key performance index to ensure the maintenance of core values supporting the patient.

References

Alkhenizan A., & Shaw C. (2011). Impact of accreditation on the quality of healthcare services: a systematic review of the literature (4th ed., pp. 16-407). Annals of Saudi medicine.

American College of Health Executives. (n.d.). The healthcare executive's role in ensuring quality and patient safety. Retrieved from www.ache.org/about-ache/our-story/our-commitments/policy-statements

MacVean, A., & Spindler, P. (2012). Handbook of Policing, Ethics and Professional Standards (1st ed., pp. 5-12). London, England: Routledge.