The Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organizations (CAHO) has launched the ACE Program as a quality improvement initiative in association with 3M India that serves as the technical guidance partner in this initiative. CAHO has decided to take up this challenge and to raise the competency of the Central Sterile Supply Department (CSSD) setups across hospitals in India.

CSSD is an inhouse department within a hospital which is responsible for the supply of the clean and sterile instruments used within the hospital for various procedures.

The year-long programme has multiple phases of engagement with the participant hospitals across the year. First is the awareness phase that aims at educating the CSSD team on the standards and support them to adopt best practices by the international sterilisation guidelines.

The second phase, compliance is when CAHO auditors visit the participant hospitals and perform audits to suggest the gaps that could be bridged to improve the efficiency of the CSSD Department.

The final phase of excellence is about recognising the hospitals that have best adopted the standards as per recommendations and guidelines. The hospitals will receive recognition directly from CAHO which will be announced at CAHO’s Annual Conference in 2022 (CAHOCON 2022).