What is HSO?
HSO stands for Health Standards Organization. Formed in February 2017, their goal is to unleash the power and potential of people around the world who share their passion for achieving quality health services for all. They are a registered non-profit headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.

What does that mean?
Their focus is on developing standards, assessment programs and other tools to help care providers do what they do best: save and improve lives. Recognized by the Standards Council of Canada, they are the only Standards Development Organization solely dedicated to health and social services.

Where did HSO come from?
HSO is building on the strength of nearly 60 years of experience by Accreditation Canada, Canada’s leading health care accreditation body.

In 2016, they consulted more than 700 stakeholders across Canada and around the world to understand how best to put their collective learnings to work. Key takeaways from this review included:

-Standards development must be separate from conducting assessments in order to be the best-in-class at both
-The accreditation process must be more accountable and transparent, with a stronger focus on outcomes and consistency
-Standards and assessments need to be easily actionable, clinically relevant, and tailored to local contexts
-Patients (and their families), practitioners and policy-makers all play critical roles in improving health globally

Why create a new organization?
Rigorous consensus-based, evidence-informed standards are the core of quality improvement . They created HSO to help save and improve lives using the best research and leading expertise from around the world.