NABH RELEASES DRAFT ACCREDITATION STANDARDS FOR MEDICAL IMAGING CENTRES

December 9, 2009

NABH has released draft accreditation standards for accreditation of medical imaging centres. Medical Imaging Services cover investigations of patients that provide imaging information for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease; or assessment of health. It includes conventional radiation based diagnostic radiology as well as a wide variety of specialised techniques including ultrasound, Doppler, Bone densitometry, CT scan, MRI, PET-CT etc.

These services are essential for patient care and therefore must meet the needs of all patient and the clinical personnel responsible for the care of those patients. These services include arrangement for requisition, choice of correct (most informative and cost effective) imaging techniques, patient information, patient consent, patient preparation, patient identification, performance of imaging procedures, interpretation, reporting and advice regarding the result, in addition to the consideration of safety and ethics in diagnostic imaging services.

The idea behind the release of these standards is to ensure that the medical imaging centres must maintain certain standard of services (statutory or otherwise); as well as, strive for continuous improvement in the quality of services they provide. Close collaboration with clinical colleagues, verification of result and correct maintenance and calibration of the equipment are also a part of quality management in the department of medical imaging.

The NABH Standards for Accreditation for medical imaging services have been developed keeping in mind all the above and the standards are divided into 7 chapters containing 27 standards and 113 objective elements. These standards provide general guidelines pertaining to all diagnostic imaging services. Specific guidelines for X-ray, Fluoroscopy, USG, CT scan, MR and Nuclear Imaging etc. have also been addressed separately for completeness of the document.

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