UK’s Trent Accreditation Makes Changes

The UK’s Trent Accreditation System, employed by hospitals around the world, has been replaced by Quality Healthcare Advice (QHA Trent) after Britain’s National Health Service cut funding for Trent in a cost-savings move. At no stage was there any suggestion of problems in the quality of what Trent’s surveyors were doing; many were NHS employees.

A number of the surveyors in the Trent program decided to collaborate and continue with accreditation work, affiliating with Hong Kong-based QHA to form QHA Trent as a new limited company based in the Trent region of the UK, and owned and managed by a group of UK doctors and healthcare executives. 

QHA Ltd. will provide independent accreditation services under the banner of QHA Trent, and the plan is to:

* Provide services at competitive, transparent rates on the fees charged and surveyors’ airfares and living expenses

* Ensure that QHA operating methods and health standards remain as high and as professional as possible

* Seek to partner organizations with reputations for excellence in the field of healthcare quality and risk minimization

* Maintain an independent panel of experts drawn from a wide range of backgrounds to oversee the accreditation work of QHA Trent

* Ensure there is a strong bespoke element embedded into the co-development process for standards with partner hospitals

* Base the program on voluntary expert surveyors who are actively working in healthcare and relevant academia in the UK

* Offer the option to recruit and train additional surveyors drawn from the staff of QHA Trent’s partner hospitals around the world

* Offer high-quality assistance at competitive rates for hospitals and clinics preparing for accreditation