[Accreditation of health care organizations]

The order No. 96-346 dated April 27, 1996 introduced in French Law, made it compulsory for all private and public health care organizations to be granted an official approval, the 'certificate of accredication'. This article aims at describing the main principles of a process which will surely profoundly modify quality management of health care in sanitary bodies. The first part is a reminder of the main concepts used in quality management which help us to understand and use the guidelines of accreditation distributed by the National French Agency for Accreditation and Assessement of Health Care (Agence Nationale pour l'Accréditation et l'Evaluation des établissements de santé--ANAES). The second part of this article presents the procedure for granting the certificate of accreditation, especially its successive steps (the procedure launching, the self-evaluation phase, the visit of experts sent by ANAES, the report written by the experts and its aim). Beyond this procedure, a third part briefly underlines the main directions for developing efficient quality control and safety management of health care in sanitary bodies.