North America.

And this should breed confidence in the care provided by the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and St. Brendan's Hospital, said Quality and Patient Relations Manager Aldwin Savery.

Hospital spokeswoman Kendaree Burgess-Fairn said this was something to be particularly proud of, considering the size of Bermuda's population and the number of services the hospital provided.

The Canadian Council on Hospital Services' Accreditation conducted an independent and objective review recently to see how operations matched up against their national standards and to monitor performance.

About 1,300 hospitals across Canada are accredited under the council, said Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) executive director Sheila Manderson, who added that the standards were proven to encourage all staff to give top quality care.

Ms Burgess-Fairn said attention had shifted toward how staff performed together, the communication within the hospital hierarchy and whether patients received the care they deserved.

This followed changes to accreditation the hospitals received previously when accreditors focused primarily on the physical plant.

Patients and staff on all levels were involved with the accreditation, she added, not just management, and all sections of the hospitals were looked at.

Mr. Savery said the standards lent themselves as an opportunity to continually assess hospitals performance and upgrade it between accreditations.

BHB chairman Robert Tucker said the accreditation process could be compared to an "operational audit''. If anything was discovered that could be done better, then steps would be taken to implement necessary changes as part of the ongoing process of improving the hospital, he added.

And recommendations supplied by the accreditation team would also be reviewed and eventually implemented along with work the hospital was presently conducting. Ms Burgess-Fairn stressed the hospitals were "very happy'' about receiving the accreditation and it showed they were going in "the right direction'' toward their vision of being a centre of excellence.