Initiating Accreditation

A medical school expressing an interest in ACCM accreditation will often commence its communications with a general enquiry and a request for further information about the accreditation process. Once a school makes a formal application for first-time accreditation the following steps are followed:

Stage 1 – Preliminary assessment: An initial assessment by ACCM to determine whether the school meets ACCM’s basic requirements for consideration for eligibility. ACCM may reject an application at Stage 1 without any explanation.

Stage 2 – Initial Review: An initial review of the School’s documentation by ACCM, on receipt of the initial application fee, in order to determine whether the school meets ACCM requirements to be considered as a candidate for accreditation. ACCM may reject an application at Stage 2 without any explanation.

Stage 3 – In-Depth Assessment: Subsequent to a decision that the school meets the initial requirements, and on receipt of the 2nd application fee, an in depth assessment of additional documentation by a team of Commissioners, leading to a report to the ACCM Board, which then decides whether the candidate school merits an inspection.

Stage 4 – Full Accreditation Review (FAR), to include on-site inspections of the medical school campus, the administrative headquarters and a representative number of affiliated clinical sites.

The ACCM board makes a decision regarding accreditation status, which is then communicated to the school and all relevant stakeholders. A school that is being evaluated for accreditation for the first time whose facilities are not in close proximity but are located in separate geographical locations may require several separate site visits by the ACCM inspection team over a specified time period in order to fully complete the requirements for accreditation. In these circumstances, the school may be granted conditional accreditation for one year where it is found to be in substantial compliance with ACCM standards following an inspection of the pre-clinical campus. At the end of this year, when the administrative headquarters and selected clinical sites have been inspected, conditional accreditation will, depending on the degree of compliance with the ACCM Standards of Accreditation, be replaced by:

  •  Accreditation for a total period of three years.
  • Accreditation for a total period of six years
  • Probationary accreditation

A school that is found to be in full compliance with the ACCM Standards will be granted accreditation for a maximum of 6 years. A school that is not in full compliance with the ACCM Standards will be granted accreditation for three years. A school that falls out of substantial compliance with the Standards at any time during an accreditation period, will be placed on probation.

However, a new applicant school where all facilities are co-located, thus permitting a full accreditation inspection to be carried out by ACCM in a single visit, may be granted  accreditation for a maximum of 6 years if it is found to be fully compliant with the Standards at that time.