Sammanfattning
A national model of quality, including accreditation, is to be implemented in Danish hospitals before the end of 2006. This makes it of current interest to analyse accreditation as a method of assessing and improving quality. The method of health technology assessment is appropriate for this analysis because of the broad approach of describing accreditation as seen from the perspective of patients, organization, and economy. There is no documented evidence that accreditation improves patient outcome, and due to limited studies regarding the consequences of implementing accreditation, there can be no unambiguous conclusion that accreditation is effective as a method of quality assessment and improvement.