HAS certification has entered its 6th cycle since September 2025. Its framework, tightened around 12 objectives and 118 criteria, raises the level of requirement on key public-health issues.
For healthcare establishments, the challenge goes beyond documentary compliance. The point is to prove that good practices are anchored in the daily life of the teams, during the visit by the expert assessors.
This guide decodes the system and proposes a concrete methodology to structure the training of your healthcare professionals ahead of the certification.
What is HAS certification?
A mandatory external assessment for all healthcare establishments
HAS certification is an independent assessment procedure imposed by article L.6113-3 of the French Public Health Code. It concerns all healthcare establishments in France: public hospitals, private clinics, mental-health establishments.
Carried out every 4 years by expert assessors mandated by the French National Authority for Health (HAS), it evaluates the level of quality and safety of care. Its objective: to identify the strengths and the areas for improvement of each structure against a national framework.
At the end of the visit, four decisions are possible: certified with distinction, certified, certified under conditions or not certified. The results are published on the Qualiscope website, accessible to the general public.
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Consequences of an insufficient result
A non-certification or a certification under conditions leads to a report to the ARS (regional health agency), an imposed corrective action plan and a significant reputational impact. At the end of 2024, 87% of French establishments were certified, which means that 13% were not fully certified: either certified under conditions, or not certified. (source: HAS, 2024).
The 3 chapters of the framework: patient, teams, establishment
The certification framework is organised into 3 chapters, each broken down into 4 objectives. This architecture reflects a systemic logic: the quality of care rests on the articulation between the patient experience, team practices and institutional governance.
In total, 118 criteria are spread across three levels of requirement: 92 standard criteria, 21 imperative criteria and 5 advanced criteria (source: HAS, 2025 framework).
The 5 assessment methods during the visit
The expert assessors mobilise five complementary methods to evaluate practices in the field:
- Patient tracer: analysis of a real patient's pathway by cross-referencing their experience and the professionals' practices
- Pathway tracer: assessment of the continuity and coordination of care across an entire pathway
- Targeted tracer: verification of the mastery of a specific process (medication, adverse events, infections, etc.)
- System audit: assessment of the institutional strategy and its appropriation by the teams
- Observation: visual assessment of compliance with good practices in the field
Each method requires specific skills. A caregiver must be able to explain their practice, not just apply it. This is where upskilling comes into play.
What changes with the 6th cycle
A simplified framework but reinforced requirements
The 6th cycle reduces the number of objectives from 15 to 12 and the criteria from 132 to 118. But this simplification does not mean a lightening. The imperative criteria rise from 17 to 21 and their wording is more precise (source: HAS, September 2025).
Concretely, the expectations are more targeted and leave less room for interpretation. For the teams, this implies mastering very specific practices rather than settling for general knowledge.
The new public-health priorities integrated into the framework
The 2025 framework integrates new priorities that reflect the current challenges of the health system. Each of these axes represents an identifiable training need for the teams:
- Emergencies and unscheduled pathways: direct-hospitalisation channels, coordination with community medicine
- Psychiatry and mental health: suicide prevention, isolation and restraint practices, social inclusion (national great cause 2025)
- Women's health and perinatal care: securing the care of the newborn
- Medication safety: relevance of antibiotic prescriptions (imperative criterion), fight against antibiotic resistance
- Digital health: cybersecurity, telehealth, digital medical devices integrating AI
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Good to know: digital enters the assessment criteria
The 2025 framework significantly reinforces the requirements related to digital. Cybersecurity, use of digital medical devices, governance of AI tools: as many skills that the teams must now master to satisfy the certification criteria.
Schedule and practical arrangements
The visits carried out since September 2025 apply the new framework. The Calista platform remains the reference tool for exchanges between the establishment and the HAS.
An establishment whose visit is scheduled in the next 12 to 18 months must, from now on, take ownership of the changes and train its teams accordingly.
Why the training of teams is the key factor of certification
The trap of documentary compliance
Many establishments concentrate their preparation on written protocols, indicators and quality dashboards. This is necessary, but insufficient.
The assessment methods of the 6th cycle (patient tracer, observation) evaluate the real practices, in the field. A professional who does not know how to explain why they apply a protocol will be in difficulty in front of an expert assessor.
Written protocols do not mean mastered practices
Certification evaluates the anchoring of good practices in the daily life of professionals, not their existence in a binder. A gap between what is written and what is observed constitutes a major warning signal for the expert assessors.
The concrete skills assessed during the visit
Beyond theoretical knowledge, the expert assessors observe operational know-how: the ability to explain one's choices (patient tracer), knowledge of critical circuits (medication, emergency, transfusion), reflexes for reporting serious adverse events (SAE), communication with the patient (information, consent) and coordination in a multidisciplinary team.
Each of these skills must be trained, not simply known. Continuing professional development (DPC) offers a structured framework for this upskilling.
The challenge of training at scale
An establishment may have hundreds of professionals to train on multiple themes. Continuous care activity, shift rotations, on-call duties, heterogeneity of profiles: classic formats (one-off quality days, top-down in-person sessions) are no longer enough.
How to structure a training plan to prepare for HAS certification
Step 1: map the gaps between practices and criteria
The starting point is the internal self-assessment, achievable via the Calista platform, cross-referenced with the results of the previous cycle. The objective: to identify the priority training areas by focusing on the 21 imperative criteria.
Prioritise the at-risk themes: medication circuit, identity vigilance, patients' rights, management of adverse events. A structured training plan makes it possible to turn this mapping into an operational roadmap.
Step 2: design training centred on practices
The classic mistake consists of presenting the framework in the form of slideshows. Yet cognitive science demonstrates that learning is effective when it confronts the learner with situations close to their real context (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).
Favour role-plays: patient-tracer simulation, practical SAE-reporting cases, observation scenarios. Personalised feedback after each exercise reinforces the anchoring of good practices.
Tip: transform your training
Before: a 40-slide PowerPoint on the medication circuit. After: an interactive role-play where the professional must identify the risks of error in a realistic dispensing scenario, with immediate feedback on their choices.
Step 3: deploy at scale without disorganising the activity
Asynchronous online training covers the fundamentals, freeing up in-person time for practical workshops. Microlearning allows regular reminders, compatible with the scheduling constraints of caregivers.
Adaptive learning personalises the paths according to the level and profile of each professional. A suitable LMS makes it possible to reach all departments without imposing the same sessions on everyone.
Step 4: measure the upskilling
Track precise indicators: completion rate per department, scores in the role-plays, evolution of the self-assessments. Cross-reference this data with the imperative criteria to have a dashboard of quality maturity before the visit.
The frequent mistakes in preparing for HAS certification
Starting the preparation too late
Six months before the visit, it is too late to durably anchor good practices. Memory anchoring, as described by Ebbinghaus's work on the forgetting curve, requires spaced repetition over time.
Ideally start 18 to 24 months before the provisional visit date. This lead time makes it possible to train, consolidate and adjust before the assessment.
Training only the quality officers
Certification evaluates all the teams. During a patient tracer, an expert assessor can question any professional involved in the care. The quality officers will not be the only contacts on the day of the visit.
Training must reach all caregivers and support staff, from the care assistant to the doctor, including the administrative and technical teams.
Confusing information with training
Sending the framework by email is not training. Reading a protocol is not knowing how to apply it.
Information vs training: an essential distinction
To inform is to transmit content. To train is to ensure that the professional knows how to apply it in a real situation. Research in cognitive science (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) shows that active retrieval from memory (testing effect) is far more effective than simple rereading for durably anchoring knowledge.
Conclusion
The 6th HAS certification cycle raises the level of requirement. A tightened framework, reinforced imperative criteria, new public-health priorities: establishments no longer have the option of postponing the preparation.
The quality of care is played out in the daily practices of the teams, not in the binders. Investing in structured training, suited to the constraints of the field and measurable, is the best lever to succeed in the visit and durably improve patient care.
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