The purpose of the accreditation sub-system is mainly to monitor whether organizational units comply with relevant national standards and indicators.

Two types of organizational units are especially important in this context:

• Institutions

• Sub-units to institutions

These types of organizational units are the most important, because it is on these levels, the monitoring of compliance with standards is carried out.

The accreditation sub-system will typically handle other types of organisational units, e.g. on the national or regional levels. These levels are not monitored for compliance with standards, but they may be used for defining guidelines etc., that the lower levels must adhere to.

The term "institution" is a generic term. Which level of organizational unit is used as institution, may vary from sector to sector.

• In the hospital sector, the obvioius choice for institution is the hospital level.

• In the municipial sector, one possible choice for the insititution level is the municipality. Another option may be institutions below the municipality.

The above chapter defines the tw0 important types of organizational units: "Institutions" and "Sub-units to institutions".

In some sectors, institutions may be very similar. For example the pharmacy sector: all pharmacies perform the same tasks (providing medicin / drugs), so it is logical, that they should conform to the same set of standards.

On the other hand, in some sectors institutions may be very different. For example, not all hospitals have the same types of departments. Hospital departments typically handle a specific type of healthcare problems (specialty). Therefore, it would not make sense to check compliance with the same standard set on all hospitals and department.

The accreditation sub-system in TOPICA is designed to be flexible enough to allow for both of the above situations. Of course, there exists a common set of (national) standards (per sector) - see Standards and Indicators, but it must be possible to "distribute" different standards to institutions and their sub-units.

Distribution is multi-stage process

The above types of distribution consitute the foundation for the activites performed by the institution themselves: Selfevaluation.

• When a Record Audit is created, it will per default contain the indicators currently distributed to the actual sub-unit.

  Each record audit contains its own "distribution". It is possible to add/remove indicators in each record audit without affecting the distribuiton on the sub-unit. It is possible to change the distribution of indicators in the sub-unit without affecting the existing record audits.

• When a Selfevaluation is created, it will per default contain the standards and indicators currently distributed to the actual sub-unit.

  Each selfevaluation contains its own "distribution". It is possible to add/remove standards and indicators in each record audit without affecting the distribuiton on the sub-unit. It is possible to change the distribution of indicators in the sub-unit without affecting the existing record audits.

Survey objects, on the other hand, are NOT per default created from the actual distrubution on the organizational unit level.