Contributions of hospital accreditation for patient safety: integrative review

Introduction: Patient safety is an important aspect of health care quality, since there is a need to develop strategies to improve service quality and minimize the occurrence of errors with the implementation of hospital accreditation programs. Objective: To analyze the contributions of hospital accreditation for patient safety of patient care in the hospital environment. Methodology: This is an integrative review of scientific studies published in SCIELO, MEDLINE, LILACS and BDENF between the years 2015 and 2020. Eleven studies were selected to compose the discussion of this study. Results: The study found that the main benefits of hospital accreditation for the quality of patient safety were increased safety for patients and professionals; quality of care; improvement of training and continuing education of professionals; strengthening of teamwork; continuous improvement; optimization of work processes; and cost reduction. Conclusion: Thus, it is important to highlight that the process of hospital accreditation provides an institutional commitment to improve the quality of care and patient safety in health services, especially in hospital organizations, through process mapping and standardization, team training and constant process monitoring.