GHA revamps medical travel accreditation

The Global Healthcare Accreditation Programme has appointed former JCI boss Karen Timmons as CEO. 50 organizations have achieved GHA status for their health tourism and medical travel programs.

The Global Healthcare Accreditation Programme (GHA) for medical travel, medical tourism and/or international patients, has appointed Karen Timmons as its new Chief Executive Officer. Timmons used to lead Joint Commission International.

50 organizations have achieved GHA status for their health tourism and medical travel programs. This number is projected to increase in developed markets. GHA focuses on an organization’s medical travel business with four subsets of hospital, ambulatory, diagnostic, and laboratory. It looks at an organization’s core competencies and compliance levels to ensure it is fully committed to providing safe and efficient patient care throughout the entire medical travel cycle. GHA standards include 17 core competencies on medical travel.

The Medical Tourism Association set up GHA in 2009, but the GHA is now a separate organisation.

US hospital group Mercy Hospital Springfield is the latest to get GHA status. Mercy is heavily involved in domestic and medical travel, arranging domestic medical travel deals for employees of Walmart, Lowes, JetBlue and McKesson.