Objectives: The aims of this study were to evaluate dental hospital achievement and to suggest a scoring system and accreditation method.
Methods: The study classified standards into three types (A, B and C) and summed up the element of performance using 7 assigning method. Based on the outcome of 2007 demonstration project in which four dental hospitals participated, we analyzed their compliance based on 3 points scoring system.
Results: The compliance of domains in order was Facilities and Patients Safety (1.62), Staff Qualification and Education (1.57), Dental Information System (1.48), Patients Right and Convenience (1.446), Health Service Delivery (1.411, HSD), Infection Control (1.14, IC). Standards, which included legal constraint factors, generally achieved high compliance, while standards that contained hospitals autonomous efforts to enhance quality of dental services revealed relatively low scores. In particular, the fact that HSD and IC, which contained unique dental aspects revealed low achievement, asked for dental hospital sincere efforts on the quality improvement. The standard scores of HDS were skewed unequally into participated dental hospitals. Those meant that minor hospitals showed low compliance on the specific standards, but others remained acceptable level.
Conclusion: Study findings suggested that the score of participated dental hospitals reveled that more than two types of dental standards were needed at least due to the facility size and difference in employed personnels and services delivered to patients. The way and method the study applied to this study can be used as a reference for new development or revise of dental accreditation standards.