HOW TO DESIGN AN NABH COMPLIANT HOSPITAL

1. What is NABH?

National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) is a constituent board of Quality Council of India, set up to establish and operation accreditation program for healthcare organizations. NABH is structured to cater too much desired needs of the consumers and to set benchmarks for progress of health industry.

2. What are the benefits of NABH?

NABH is Public Recognition of achievement of accreditation standard by a healthcare Organization, demonstrated through an independent external peer assessment of that organization's level of performance in relation to the NABH standards.

Though NABH is integral part of Healthcare service providers as it’s prerequisite to get empanelled for various government facilities and insurance facility, as it provides access to reliable and certified information on facility. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) have directed healthcare providers offering cashless services for allopathic treatment to meet National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH)’s pre-accreditation entry level standards.

NABH Accreditation benefits all stakeholders, Patients are the biggest beneficiary, it ensures high quality of care, along with that it also emphasize over safety of caregivers. It stimulates continuous quality improvement to a health care organization.  With all that safety measures NABH also be helpful in competitive advantage.

3. What is Entry Level NABH?

NABH and QCI jointly released Pre-accreditation Entry Level Certification Standards after healthcare organization, especially small hospitals, as they found full Accreditation standards highly challenging to start with in both way financially and space constraints. Its standards have lesser requirements in comparison to full accreditation.

4. How to design an NABH Compliant Hospital?

Upcoming hospitals and healthcare organization need to develop hospital in such a way that are compliant with the NABH standards, though infrastructure wise But NABH Complies with the laws of land. Usually Indian Hospital designer follows the NBC (National Building Code of India) It serves as a Model Code for adoption by all agencies involved in building construction works. The Code mainly contains administrative regulations, development control rules and general building requirements; fire safety requirements; stipulations regarding materials, structural design and construction (including safety); building and plumbing services; approach to sustainability; and asset and facility management.

Apart from that, Operation theater and CSSD must have Suitable location and layout which leads to unidirectional flow and zoning. Sufficient space need to plan to ensure that the activities can be performed properly. HIS (Hospital Infection Society India) and HTM Guidelines are useful. 

5. How to get NABH Design Compliance for Existing old set-ups?

For Existing hospitals, it is quite challenging to meet with all standers, especially in structural requirements stipulated by NABH in their running set up. The existing hospital may require some design changes to fulfill minimum requirement in order to provide quality healthcare services for both patient and staff. Most of the old hospitals get noncompliance in total floor area per bed requirement, Clean & dirty doors separation. 

Realizing that smaller players find it tough to stick some of its size norms, NABH has eased its stipulation for OT rooms. “In all fairness, not all surgeries really called for the erstwhile minimum 400 sq ft. However, they still insist on engineering standards for OTs that often doesn’t add up” NABH not only focuses setting up quality in healthcare setups but also in operational way too.

Imaging services shall have adequate space and equipment to meet its defined scope of services which shall include Physical space, MEP requirements.  AERB guidelines could be used as a reference document for radiation based imaging.      

Timely repair of civil structure like walls, servicing of furniture must be carried out.

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