The importance of educating management on NABH standards

Many administrators and quality professionals leading the task of implementing NABH in their hospitals face this one particular issue quite often - lack of management support. While it is the management who has assigned them with the task of implementing NABH, quality professionals find themselves pushed against the wall when their various needs are rejected by the management. Where does the problem lie?

In my assessment, I feel that the hospital owners and the people holding top positions in a hospital make wrong decisions about NABH implementation when they are unaware of the requirements of the standards. Interestingly most people have some kind of opinion regarding NABH standards and when they talk about implementation of standards, they refer to their poor knowledge about NABH standards to make their decisions. It's also been a personal observation that when the management and top people and doctors are trained on NABH standards, they are very clear about what they need to do to achieve certain goals.

I think any NABH implementation process should first start with sensitization of management team and head-of-departments (HODs) or key managers on NABH standards and training them on the complete requirements. Once they have gone through the initial training, they would be better prepared to understand the demands put forth by standards, and accordingly they can see their commitment level to NABH implementation. This would go a long way in simplifying the work of a quality professional.