title: The external assessment of health services.
abstract: External assessment is increasingly used worldwide to regulate, improve and market health care providers, especially hospitals. The commonest models are peer review, accreditation, statutory inspection, ISO certification and evaluation (usually internal) against the 'business excellence' framework. Each of these is progressively adapting to meet the changing demands of public accountability, clinical effectiveness and improvement of quality and safety, but the most rapid development is in accreditation.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Shaw
mesh_terms: D000068:Accreditation; D002568:Certification; D014943:Global Health; D006296:Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D018024:Peer Review, Health Care