Providing Accreditation Standards for Dental Clinics in Iran

Accreditation includes different dimensions of the health system across the world. The accreditation of healthcare facilities is adopted for more than a decade in Iran hospitals, yet it lacks the coverage of dental clinics. Then, it seems necessary to develop a framework for them. In this study, the accreditation structure of dental clinics in selected countries has been reviewed and a model for Iran has been presented. A comparative study of the accreditation patterns of outpatient or dental clinics in selected countries (USA, Scotland, Malaysia, India, and UAE) was done. Then the validity of the proposed model was confirmed by the Delphi technique.

According to the results, the main categories of dental clinics standards in selected countries included: access and continuity of service, rights of service givers, patient care, anesthesia and surgery, drug management and consumption, management and leadership, improving quality and patient safety, health and infection control, facility management, safety, and information management. Finally, the proposed model with 84 standards under 10 main categories was approved. The proposed accreditation model can fill the gap in existing accreditation standards of healthcare facilities and can improve the quality of dental clinic services in Iran.