Everything ASF assesses against, and everything ASF holds itself to. Published in full.
Forty-six documents: seven organizational standards, the methodology that produces them, the policies that protect the public, and the procedures ASF applies to its own management system. Every document carries a reference code, version and document control block. All are free to download and free to reuse by any organization building accreditation in its own country.
Organizational Standards
The seven facility-type standards. Every criterion is tagged for all four facility categories — Crisis, Transitional, Small, Standard — so one document serves every resource context.
v3.0
Full hospital accreditation standard — 9 standards (7 patient-journey standards plus Medical Tourism and Refugee & Migrant Health endorsements), 96 criteria, self-assessment and guidance page for every criterion.
v3.0
Outpatient, ambulatory and dental facilities — base standard plus specialty endorsements, with the Small category defined by staffing depth and service breadth rather than beds.
v3.0
Residential elderly and long-term care facilities — dignity, resident rights, falls and pressure-injury prevention, end-of-life care.
v3.0
Primary care clinics and family-medicine practices — continuity, referral pathways, chronic-disease management, community health role.
v3.0
Fitness clubs, pools and wellness facilities — the ASF Facility Safety Certified mark: injury prevention, emergency readiness, instructor competence, water and air quality.
v3.0
Telehealth and remote-care providers — identity verification, clinical appropriateness, data protection, continuity to in-person care.
v3.0
In-home nursing and personal-care providers — lone-worker safety, medication in the home, caregiver involvement, safeguarding.
Governance & Methodology
How the standards are made, and who is allowed to assess against them.
v4
The master methodology manual — the four-pillars framework, evidence review, public consultation, piloting, and the revision cycle. Read this first for any standards work.
v2
Eligibility, training curriculum, calibration, certification and re-certification of ASF surveyors; conflict-of-interest rules defer to the Code of Conduct.
Institutional Identity
Where ASF comes from and why it exists.
v1
The institutional origin story — from a 2014 advocacy initiative in Georgia, through the first draft standard in 2018, to legal establishment in Paris in 2020 and three-city operation today.
Accreditation Process & Safety
What an organization goes through, and what ASF asks of it on safety.
v1
Client-facing guide to the whole accreditation journey — eligibility, self-assessment, registration, evidence, survey, decision, and what continues after the award.
v1
Self-reporting of serious adverse events by accredited organizations — non-punitive, time-bound, and routed to exactly one process.
v1
Standard for accrediting training and CPD providers, courses and activities — the basis of ASF CPD Accreditation and the ASF Passport record.
v2
Six critical patient-safety practices, WHO-evidence-grounded, reviewed annually and kept deliberately short.
Public Transparency & Accountability
The public's rights in relation to ASF and the organizations it accredits.
v2
How anyone — patient, family, staff member, member of the public — reports a concern about an accredited organization, or about ASF itself, and what happens next.
v2
What ASF publishes about every accredited, suspended and withdrawn organization. Withdrawals stay visible — nothing is delisted quietly.
v2
Plain-language guide for patients and families — what an ASF seal does and does not guarantee, and how to use it.
Internal Governance & ISO/IEC 17011 Alignment
ASF's own management system — the rules ASF applies to itself.
v2
How ASF audits its own processes — distinct from external review and from management review.
v2
The annual leadership review of the whole management system, its inputs and its required outputs.
v2
How ASF records, analyses and corrects its own process failures.
v2
Internal policy on revenue diversification, reserves and liability coverage so that no single funder can shape an accreditation outcome.
v2
What may be delegated to external parties and what never may be — accreditation decisions are never outsourced.
v2
Competence requirements, induction and continuing development for ASF's own staff and volunteers.
v2
The formal rule behind every document control block, reference code and version number in this library.
v2
Seven principles binding all ASF personnel — the single governing authority for conflict-of-interest rules across the portfolio.
v2
No paid ASF service — training, publishing, membership support — ever influences an accreditation decision. Names the affiliated ventures this applies to explicitly.
v2
A protected channel for anyone inside ASF to raise a concern, with anti-retaliation guarantees.
Strategy, Reference & Legal
Direction, definitions, data protection and the contracts ASF signs.
v2
Three-phase roadmap — crosswalk and partnerships, network growth and public registry, then ASF's own management-systems certification capacity.
v2
Data classification, access control, and the 72-hour breach-notification duty under GDPR.
v2
An honest gap analysis: ASF's management system is aligned with ISO/IEC 17011; ASF does not yet issue ISO 9001 certificates and states the conditions under which it could.
v2
Emergency, planned and strategic succession for the Chair, Board and key functions, with defined timelines.
v2
Every defined term across the portfolio, alphabetical and indexed by source document.
v1
GDPR lawful basis for each processing activity, retention schedule, data-subject rights, and international transfers between Paris, Geneva and Tbilisi.
v1
The signable agreement used with surveyors, contractors and partners — two-tier confidentiality duration, French governing law.
Advisory Services
Paid help for organizations that cannot afford a full-time accreditation coordinator — priced openly, structurally separated from any accreditation decision, and disclosed here rather than run through an unnamed affiliate.
v1
Plain-language public statement: what ASF sells, what it never sells, the three-year cooling-off between advising an organization and surveying it, and how to check.
v1
The governing rule: advisory work and accreditation decisions are organizationally separated — the same conflict-of-interest problem financial auditing already solved, applied to accreditation.
v1
The full priced service catalogue: dedicated coordinator, training, Patient Voice Package, publications, environmental monitoring, the 12-month programme, and a worked cost comparison. Reference prices published in full.
v1
What a local partner organization must meet to deliver ASF advisory services in its country — eligibility, authorization, announced and unannounced quality review, suspension and termination.
Patient Voice Toolkit
Everything needed to run an independent patient council — the method, the three agreements, the report template, the letters, the education calendar and the recruitment materials. Each with worked examples, each also as an editable Word file so any organization can adapt it.
v1
The complete method: roles, size, chair rotation, recruitment, the seven-step monthly cycle, the WhatsApp rules, the taxonomy, the agenda, and how another organization adopts it.
v1
Signed by every patient member: confidentiality, conduct, conflicts of interest, personal data, withdrawal. With a completed example and the signature form.
v1
Signed by the secretariat for each council: independence, impartiality, informality, confidentiality, diligence, accountability.
v1
What the facility commits to; channels (QR, hotline, form, social, paper); GDPR data-sharing clause; publication; fees; a local-law annex with Georgia completed.
v1
The six-part report the cycle runs on, with a complete worked example month from a 120-bed hospital and the register format.
v1
The acknowledgement and five written answers — confirmed and changed, in progress, not confirmed or disputed, praise, outside remit — with filled examples and a pre-send checklist.
v1
Twelve thirty-minute sessions with outlines, presenters, materials and the trigger that makes each the right month; session plan and the five-question discharge card.
v1
Entrance notice in English and Georgian, website text, social-media posts, the discharge-paper line, the facility checklist and the application form.
Every code follows ASF-[TYPE]-[NUMBER]-v[VERSION]. A whole-number version change (v1 → v2) is a substantive revision; a decimal change (v1.0 → v1.1) is a correction or clarification only. The rule is set out in the Document Control Procedure, and every document’s control block states what it supersedes and when it is next due for review.
ASF’s own management system is aligned with ISO/IEC 17011, the standard for accreditation bodies. ASF does not currently issue ISO 9001 certificates. Issuing them requires a separate accreditation under ISO/IEC 17021-1, which ASF does not yet hold; the Feasibility Roadmap and the Strategic Plan describe the staged path, without a committed date.
ASF makes its standards, methodology and policies available in full, free of charge, to any organization that wants to establish accreditation in its own country. Accreditation should be accessible, transparent and self-sufficient — the aim is that local bodies build and own their own systems. Write to us if you intend to adapt any of these documents; we ask only for attribution and a note of what you changed.
Have a question about a document?
Corrections, translation requests and proposals for the next revision cycle are welcome from anyone — accredited or not.
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