Accreditation is a self-assessment and external review process used by healthcare organisations to accurately assess their level of performance in relation to established standards and to implement ways to continually improve.  Accreditation by itself does not work in poorer hospitals, but it is a big motivator. More fundamental quality improvement methods must be used to improve the quality of health service provision as a fore-runner to accreditation. Accreditation is an excellent goal to strive for when the quality improvement programmes start to work.

Quality improvement is a concerted efforts to improve the quality of medical care as well as the degree to which health services for individuals and population increases the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.