Outcome of the first Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) primary health care accreditation cycle in Saudi Arabia.

OBJECTIVES: To study and evaluate the first phase of the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Health Institutions (CBAHI) in primary health care (PHC) accreditation cycle. Methods: A descriptive analytical study of to evaluate 93 PHC survey visits in 20 regions, over the period October 2016 to May 2017. Results: In the period October 2016 to January 2017, only 28 out of 93 PHC center (30%) targeted PHC in phase-1 were surveyed, 8 PHC got accredited (29%), while 11 PHC received conditional accreditation letters (39%) and 9 PHC were denied the accreditation (32%). During February 2017 to May 2017 visits were shifted to one day site visit, all the health care facilities training's workshops were completed and the mock survey visits were started to precede the real survey visits, Since then, 65 PHC centers were surveyed (70%). At this time 47 PHC centers were accredited (72%), while 9 PHC were conditionally accredited (14%), and another 9 PHC were denied the accreditation (14%). Overall, 55 out of 93 PHC accredited (59%), 20 PHC got conditional accreditation (22%), and 18 PHC were denied the accreditation (19%). Conclusion: Surveys per month were doubled with the one-day visit site visit. Both the intensive training and mock visits, showed a great impact as the accreditation and conditional accreditation status were increased by twofold due to better understanding of the PHC staff about the standards, as well as early identification of performance gap which allowed the PHC to mitigate these gaps sufficiently enough to avoid zero scores especially in the ESR requirements.