Facility standards

Day-stay and rooms-based facility standards certification

Southern Cross Health Society is committed to providing members with access to quality healthcare. It’s important that facilities used by Southern Cross members meet appropriate quality standards. To provide peace of mind to our members, some Affiliated Provider (AP) agreements require certain contracted healthcare services to be conducted in a certified facility. This has been a feature of AP agreements since 2007.

What does this mean?

APs performing these selected procedures in day-stay facilities and procedure rooms must ensure their facilities are registered and comply with certain facility standards:

• ophthalmology
• carpal tunnel
• oral surgery
• skin procedures

The facility standards you need to hold are outlined in providers' AP agreements. Please direct any questions about requirements to your Partnership Manager.

Self-audit checklist

To help get the certification process underway, a self-audit checklist is available for providers to use. For providers with Cornerstone accreditation we have a useful comparison with the Rooms/Office-based standard and information on exclusions:

• Exclusions for Rooms/Office Based Surgery and Procedures NZS 8165:2005 for providers with current Cornerstone Aiming for Excellence accreditation
• Comparison analysis between Rooms/Office Based Surgery and Procedures NZS 8165:2005 and Cornerstone Aiming for Excellence accreditation.

Benefits of certification

• Certification is an excellent framework for maintaining good practice in business and clinical management.
• Facilities can use it as a mark of facility quality when marketing services.
• It allows for the development of benchmarking.
• Certification helps facilities establish a risk management system.
• It helps facilities develop policies and procedures that meet current best practice, i.e. medication management and waste disposal processes.

For further information about the audit process and certification, please contact one of the following Designated Auditing Agencies: