Spotlight on our Members

Institutional Member - AZUS

Agency for Accreditation of Health Care Institutions of Serbia (AZUS) was founded in October 2008, by the Government of Republic of Serbia. It performs professional, regulatory and developmental activities in the process of accreditation of healthcare institutions in Serbia. Accreditation, as defined in the Serbian Healthcare Law, is voluntary and involves an assessment of the quality of work against pre-determined optimal standards. ISQua standards were adopted as the benchmark for the design of the Serbian accreditation system. Our main goals are quality improvement, patient safety, securing efficient and cost-effective service provision, creation of equal or similar conditions for the service provision in the whole system of health care, establishment of users’ trust in the system of health care and improvement of the health care management. The main attribute of the Serbian accreditation program is patient-oriented approach and patient safety, as well as the safety of healthcare providers.

AZUS encourages health care institutions to use accreditation standards as operational tools for routinely assessing and documenting their strengths as well as identifying and correcting their weaknesses.

So far, AZUS has developed 2 main sets of standards: primary healthcare accreditation standards and secondary and tertiary healthcare accreditation standards, including standards for accreditation of laboratories, pharmacies and diagnostics imaging. AZUS developed standards for physical medicine and rehabilitation, as well as for dentistry. Set of dentistry standards are a rarity in our region. Also, in 2016 AZUS developed standards for maternity wards and neonatology departments, with the emphasis on family-oriented approach. In 2019 AZUS developed a new set of standards in the field of nuclear medicine.

On two occasions in 2010 and 2017 AZUS trained around 200 external surveyors for standards interpretation, survey process, documentation review, specific or specialized areas (safety, infection control, etc) and report-writing skills. In 2010 the training programme for external surveyors includes eleven CME training courses on quality and accreditation. In 2017 the training programme consisted of 3 online courses and 5 practical courses. By completing training AZUS’s surveyors gain skills necessary for proper assessment of accreditation standards, evaluation of the quality of work, identification of improvement opportunities and further development.

AZUS issued 256 certificates, where some healthcare institutions have been accredited more than once. Therefore, there are 170 public healthcare institutions (all three levels of healthcare) and 15 private healthcare institutions accredited, so the total percentage of accredited public healthcare institutions by AZUS is 47,62%.

Since 2012, AZUS has been appointed as a Regional Health Development Centre on Accreditation and continuous quality improvement within South-eastern Europe Health Network. Activites of RHDC on Accreditation and Continuous Quality Improvement are connected to experience exchange and capacity building, thought projects, meetings and Multi-County Workshops mainly supported by TAIEX, UNICEF etc.

Find out more about AZUS at www.azus.gov.rs

If you would like to see your organisation featured in a future edition of our newsletter, please contact Sinead smcardle@isqua.org