An accreditation is a process that certifies that an organization, service, area or unit complies with specific standards or criteria, in order to ensure that a service is provided with quality, safety and competence. An external and expert accreditation body (public institutions, scientific societies and national and international organizations) verifies and assesses compliance with the established standards. In this way, accreditations guarantee an optimal quality management system, improve processes, and also increase customer confidence and satisfaction.
Accreditations by government institutions (the Catalan Health Service – the Catalan Ministry of Health, the Spanish Ministry of Health, and the European Commission) also seek to identify the expertise and track record of multidisciplinary teams in highly specialized hospitals, in order to guarantee access for all citizens to complex, high-tech procedures and multidisciplinary, comprehensive and expert care. At an institutional level, there are currently three accreditations that share similar objectives: the Clinical Expertise Unit Networks (Xarxes d’Unitats d’Expertesa Clínica, XUEC) in Catalonia, the Reference Centres, Services and Units of the National Health System (Centros, Servicios y Unidades de Referencia del Sistema Nacional de Salud, CSUR) in Spain, and the European Reference Networks (ERN) in Europe.