The accreditation of ultrasound practices: impact on compliance with minimum performance guidelines.
OBJECTIVE
To determine the effectiveness of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) accreditation program in improving compliance with standards and guidelines for the performance of obstetric and gynecologic ultrasound examinations.


METHODS
Scores of case studies of accreditation applications were compared with their respective scores at the time of reaccreditation 3 years later. To account for the element of time, scores of applications that recently completed first-time accreditation were also compared as a control group.


RESULTS
Individual obstetric case studies, as well as the average of all obstetric and gynecologic case studies, showed highly significant improvement with the reaccreditation application when compared with the initial accreditation application 3 years earlier (all P <.001). The proportion of practices successfully meeting obstetric and gynecologic AIUM accreditation requirements improved significantly with reaccreditation (obstetric, 57.3% for accreditation compared with 86.6% for reaccreditation; gynecologic, 60% for accreditation compared with 91.9% for reaccreditation; P <.001). Furthermore, reaccreditation scores were significantly higher than scores of recent first-time applications for obstetric case studies as well as scores of the average of obstetric and gynecologic case studies (all P <.05).


CONCLUSIONS
Our study confirms that practices that sought and received ultrasound accreditation were able to improve the scores of case studies and compliance with published minimum standards and guidelines for the performance of obstetric and gynecologic ultrasound examinations when reevaluated 3 years after the initial application scores. This improvement should translate into an enhancement of the quality of ultrasound practice.
Abuhamad
Alfred Z
AZ
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, VA, USA. abuhamaz@evms.edu
Benacerraf
Beryl R
BR
Woletz
Paula
P
Burke
Bonnie L
BL
D000068:Accreditation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019983:Guideline Adherence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006176:Gynecology / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D009774:Obstetrics / Q000592:standards; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States