Elite Dental: Vietnam’s First Dental System Accredited by AACI (USA) -

Table of content

Contents

Why Accreditation Matters for Healthcare Providers
What Is AACI
How AACI’s Dental Standards Differ
Our Accreditation Timeline

On 8 September 2025, Elite Dental officially received AACI (American Accreditation Commission International) accreditation for its dental system. The milestone validates Elite’s commitment to international standards of patient safety, clinical quality and experience, and marks a new step in our mission to elevate Vietnamese dentistry on the world stage.

Why Accreditation Matters for Healthcare Providers

Independent accreditation turns the promise of “quality and safety” into measurable processes. When a clinic is assessed by a third party, patients can feel assured that every step of care from infection control and diagnostic indications to emergency readiness is benchmarked against defined standards. For operators, accreditation systematises work, reduces reliance on individuals, improves consistency across branches and strengthens a culture of continuous improvement (Plan–Do–Check–Act).

At Elite Dental Metropole, the central sterilisation area is designed to European specifications and implemented in an open‑space model to ensure visibility and compliance

In Vietnam, familiar frameworks such as the Ministry of Health’s Hospital Quality Criteria, ISO 9001:2015 for quality management, ISO 15189 for laboratories, and ISO/IEC 27001 for information security have helped clinics build a standardised operational base— a springboard towards more specialised, field‑specific accreditation models.

What Is AACI

AACI is one of the world’s leading organisations for healthcare quality accreditation and clinical excellence certification. Built on ISO 9001:2015, it operates a systems‑management approach and the PDCA cycle (Plan–Do–Check–Act) across all healthcare processes.

Importantly, the AACI standards are cross‑referenced with WHO recommendations on safety and quality, validated by ISQua/IEEA (The International Society for Quality in Health Care External Evaluation Association), and incorporate CMS/Medicare (USA) requirements. This combination ensures global relevance while aligning with rigorous U.S. professional regulations, reinforcing the credibility and practical value of AACI accreditation.

How AACI’s Dental Standards Differ

The AACI framework sets out comprehensive requirements for quality governance, safety, workforce capability and clinical processes. At Elite Dental, we implemented version 2.1 tailored specifically for dental facilities. This dental‑specific standard requires precise compliance with 52 stringent criteria, focusing on:

- Quality governance: 8 chapters, 20 standards
- Clinical quality: 9 chapters, 25 standards.
- Facilities quality: 1 chapter, 7 standards.

AACI v2.1 dental accreditation project kick‑off at Elite Tú Xương (8 Dec 2024)

Unlike hospital‑wide models, AACI’s dental standard is designed from real‑world dental operations: restorative dentistry, orthodontics, endodontics, and implantology. Criteria are organised around systems management and the PDCA cycle to control quality chairside and within sterilisation logistics.

This means the standard goes deep into dental‑specific factors: infection‑control policies and instrument sterilisation, dental records and clinical photography, radiographic/radiation safety for X‑ray/CBCT, emergency readiness and resuscitation, dental equipment management (from handpieces to autoclaves), as well as infrastructure, amenities, fire safety and security proportional to clinic scale. These emphases protect patient safety, ensure treatment consistency and keep data transparent at the everyday “points of care”.

Official on‑site survey at Elite Huỳnh Tịnh Của (25 Aug 2025)

Notably, from 2013 to 2021, the AACI dental standards underwent three updates. The latest v2.1 (August 2021) reflects ISQua/IEEA recommendations and clarifies structure and interpretation for easier application and measurement in dentistry shows a living standard that improves with global guidance and practice needs.

Elite Dental Vietnam’s First AACI‑Accredited Dental System

For 13 years, Elite Dental has built a patient‑centred quality culture: transparent data, proactive risk identification and control, regular internal reviews, and measurable improvement cycles. This foundation enables consistent operations across locations, reduces dependence on individuals and sustains professional standards in every case.

Choosing AACI accreditation was a strategic step to benchmark current capabilities against an independent international framework, while standardising clinical and operational processes via systems management and PDCA. The outcome not only strengthens Elite’s management “backbone” but also directly enhances patient experience: tighter infection control and safety, ready emergency response, clear and predictable indications and treatment making every appointment safer and more effective.

Our Accreditation Timeline

- 8 December 2024— Project kick‑off for AACI (v2.1) dental accreditation at Elite Tú Xương.
- February–June 2025 — System‑wide preparation across three branches: standardising processes, completing documentation, and assembling evidence at each department to ensure clinical and administrative practices are implemented and recorded transparently.
- June 2025 — Mock survey (pre‑audit): a full “dress rehearsal” to check compliance, identify gaps and close improvement loops before the official survey.
- 25 August 2025 — On‑site official survey at Elite Huỳnh Tịnh Của, where AACI’s independent experts cross‑checked evidence against standards and assessed real‑world operations.
- 8 September 2025 — Elite Dental received the Letter of Accreditation: Vietnam’s first AACI‑accredited dental system, scoring 95.33/100, a region‑leading result (compared with Thailand and Japan). This milestone recognises both clinical and managerial capability and underpins Elite’s sustainable growth strategy— positioning us as a trusted destination for patients in Vietnam and worldwide, where treatment quality, safety and service experience are upheld by international standards.