Trial reportInternational journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care2017
Unannounced versus announced hospital surveys: a nationwide cluster-randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT02348567 (Unannounced or Announced Periodic Hospital Surveys), which is not on this map. Cited by 5 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Unannounced or Announced Periodic Hospital Surveys: A Study Protocol for a Nationwide Cluster-randomised, Controlled Trial
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Mediators of change in healthcare organisations subject to external assessment: a systematic review with narrative synthesis.BMJ open · 2020Pooled it
- Evaluating the Impact of Short-Notice Accreditation Assessment on Hospitals' Patient Safety and Quality Culture: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Impact of repeated hospital accreditation surveys on quality and reliability, an 8-year interrupted time series analysis.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Short-notice (48 hours) ACCREDITATION trial in Australia: stakeholder perception of assessment thoroughness, resource requirements and workforce engagement.BMJ open quality · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of unannounced versus announced surveys in detecting non-compliance with accreditation standards in public hospitals.
designA nationwide cluster-randomized controlled trial. SETTING AND
participantsAll public hospitals in Denmark were invited. Twenty-three hospitals (77%) (3 university hospitals, 5 psychiatric hospitals and 15 general hospitals) agreed to participate.
interventionTwelve hospitals were randomized to receive unannounced surveys (intervention group) and eleven hospitals to receive announced surveys (control group). We hypothesized that the hospitals receiving the unannounced surveys would reveal a higher degree of non-compliance with accreditation standards than the hospitals receiving announced surveys. Nine surveyors trained and employed by the Danish Institute for Quality and Accreditation in Healthcare (IKAS) were randomized into teams and conducted all surveys.
main outcome measureThe outcome was the surveyors' assessment of the hospitals' level of compliance with 113 performance indicators-an abbreviated set of the Danish Healthcare Quality Programme (DDKM) version 2, covering organizational standards, patient pathway standards and patient safety standards. Compliance with performance indicators was analyzed using binomial regression analysis with bootstrapped robust standard errors.
resultsIn all, 16 202 measurements were acceptable for data analysis. The risk of observing non-compliance with performance indicators for the intervention group compared with the control group was statistically insignificant (risk difference (RD) = -0.6 percentage points [-2.51-1.31], P = 0.54). A converged analysis of the six patient safety critical standards, requiring 100% compliance to gain accreditation status revealed no statistically significant difference (RD = -0.78 percentage points [-4.01-2.44], P = 0.99).
conclusionsUnannounced hospital surveys were not more effective than announced surveys in detecting quality problems in Danish hospitals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02348567, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02348567?term=NCT02348567.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.