Healthcare is remembered not only for what it cured, but for how it cared
PREP — the Patients & Relatives Experience Program — is the dedicated certification for the experience of patients and their families.
11
Experience Domains
Covering the complete patient journey.
60
Experience Standards
Defining excellence in patient care.
226
Assessment Criteria
Specific, observable performance indicators.
Why PREP exists?
The dimension of quality that accreditation forgot
Everything is measured — except how it feels.
Healthcare tracks infection rates, door-to-needle times and clinical outcomes of every kind. Yet how patients and families are treated remains the least standardised dimension of quality.
What patients remember is experience
A year after a hospital stay, few quote a lab value. They remember whether anyone smiled when they arrived frightened at the reception desk, whether someone explained the wait, and whether the bill surprised them.
Families remember it too.
Whether a mother keeping vigil was given a bed to rest on — relatives carry the experience of care as deeply as patients do.
Clinical accreditation doesn’t cover it.
Accreditation programs rightly concentrate on safety and clinical processes; experience appears within them only at the margins.
PREP fills the gap.
A complete, rigorous, assessable framework dedicated solely to the experience of patients and their relatives.
What makes PREP different
Experience-only, by design.
Every standard assesses how patients and relatives are treated, informed, supported and responded to. Nothing clinical is audited — clinical quality remains the remit of clinical accreditation.
Relatives are partners, not visitors.
PREP is the rare framework that treats the experience of families as worthy of standards in its own right — it is in the Program’s name.
Hospitality-grade service, healthcare soul.
A dedicated Service Excellence & Hospitality domain translates the disciplines of the world’s finest service organisations into the healthcare setting.
Internationally applicable.
Requirements are written as outcomes, not prescriptions, so they can be met in any health system, culture or regulatory environment.
Rigorously developed
Developed through a documented, evidence-informed process — benchmarked against recognised international frameworks, consulted on with stakeholders, pilot-tested, and evidence-referenced throughout.
Unannounced, always.
PREP surveys are never scheduled. Surveyors arrive unannounced — for the first certification and every yearly renewal — and certified facilities are monitored in real time. That is precisely its power: PREP certifies your real, everyday performance — so the mark you earn carries a credibility no scheduled audit can match, and lifts how patients perceive your entire organisation. And it is something to be proud of!
Six steps take a facility from obtaining the standards to the award. Once your application is verified and you confirm readiness, surveyors arrive unannounced within 90 days.
Audience Pathways
For Hospitals
Differentiate your facility on the dimension patients talk about most. See what certification involves and how to prepare.
For Patients & Families
The PREP mark of excellence tells you a facility has been independently assessed on how it treats people. Learn what it means.
Become a PREP Surveyor
Experienced in healthcare quality, service or patient experience? Join the panel that assesses facilities worldwide.