First‐round accreditation and pass rates on licensing examination at different medical schools in China: Closing the performance gap

Abstract Background Although the accreditation approach is widely used to ensure the quality of medical education in many countries, there is scant empirical evidence on whether and how it improves actual medical school performance. We focused on conditions in China, which introduced an accreditation system during the 2010s. Specifically, we examined the relationship between first‐round accreditation and actual performance based on the results of medical licensing examinations. Referring to organisation theory, we hypothesised that the impacts of accreditation would depend on existing performance gaps. Method In 2022, we analysed panel data from 105 Chinese medical schools during accreditation (2012 to 2021) and pass rates on medical licensing examinations (2011 to 2019), as matched into 834 school‐year records in a window of years before and after accreditation. We employed fixed‐effects regression models with a comparison group to exclude factors that may have confounded the impacts of accreditation time. We also demonstrated the heterogeneous effects of accreditation by tier and performance gap of medical schools. Results The conservative estimates showed a substantial cumulative improvement (over 15 percentage points) in pass rates during the years before accreditation, with no clear trend indicating performance drops in the years after accreditation. Lower‐tiered medical schools gained greater benefits from accreditation. Medical schools with a larger prior performance gap achieved a greater percentage point increase in pass rates with the passage of time in pre‐accreditation years. Conclusions This is the first empirical study to investigate whether accreditation has bridged performance gaps among medical schools. The results support the value of accreditation in China, a country that recently established the system, and might work as a substitute for missing information on early accreditation history in countries with long‐established accreditation systems. We encourage more studies in countries that have recently introduced accreditation systems.