The International Organization for Standardization recently published a new version of International Workshop Agreement 1, which provides additional guidance for the health care sector. IWA 1:2005 has been made more user-friendly by incorporating improvements suggested by health care providers since the original guidance document was published in 2001. The new guidelines include much of the text of ISO 9004:2000, supplemented by text specifically aimed at assisting health care organizations to implement quality management systems—regardless of whether they pursue registration to ISO 9001. The objective of the guidance document is systematic process improvement, the prevention of error and other adverse outcomes, and the reduction of variation and organizational waste.

Principal improvements to the new version of IWA 1 include:

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