The Impact of a National Accreditation Program on Patient Safety Culture in a Tertiary Hospital: Pre- and Post-Evaluation Study.

Introduction: The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Saudi national accreditation program on patient safety culture in a secondary-tertiary public hospital in Saudi Arabia.

Methods: Three hundred health professionals were randomly selected to participate in a survey. The survey was used in three phases: baseline, before accreditation, and after accreditation. Primary and secondary outcome measures were teamwork within hospital units, feedback and communication about errors, hospital handoffs and transitions, overall perceptions of safety, frequency of event reporting, and perception of patient safety grade.

Results: The survey response rate was 100%. A statistically significant impact of accreditation was found for teamwork within hospital units, feedback and communication about errors, and hospital handoffs and transitions (p = 0.002, 0.009, and 0.010, respectively). Ordinal logistic regression confirmed that the accreditation program had a significant effect on overall perceptions of safety (odds ratio [OR] [1.42-13.56], p = 0.010), frequency of event reporting (OR [0.91-7.96], p = 0.073), and staff awareness of grading safety culture (OR [0.02-0.70]) and reporting behavior (OR 0.10 [0.03-0.37]).

Conclusion: The Saudi national accreditation program had a significant positive impact on some patient safety culture dimensions and outcomes. These findings provide local empirical evidence on the benefits of implementing national accreditation programs. Further research on a larger scale is highly recommended.