Healthcare Quality Management Systems – ISO 1701
Healthcare quality management systems ISO 1701 allows your organization to meet its policy commitments and take action according to your organization’s needs to improve the service provided to patients in health centers and hospitals. Doctors, administrators, and healthcare workers use some standards to improve internal processes and achieve greater patient satisfaction. For example, one of these standards could be that patients should not wait more than 24 hours to communicate with their doctor by phone. Total quality standards are applied to improve health services and used as guidelines.
Benefits of Obtaining Healthcare Quality Management – ISO 1701 Certification
- Continuous quality review: Processes are tracked and patients are ensured to receive optimal health care. This helps improve internal processes and achieve patient satisfaction.
- Risk management and mitigation help maintain patient safety and reduce health threats. By recognizing possible risks and taking steps to avoid them, the quality of care can be enhanced.
- Improving healthcare: It helps identify weaknesses and improve them to achieve better health services. One standard could be that patients do not wait more than 24 hours to contact their doctor by phone.
- Introducing technical methods to assist: The quality management team can start working on correcting the course of operations with the concerned team. These operations are facilitated by training employees on the available technical means to improve quality.
- Integration of safety and quality systems: To enable health centers and hospitals to manage health quality and maintain patient safety, manage risks effectively, report them as soon as they occur, and use that to improve health care.
The international standard ISO 1701 contributes to improving health care and patient safety.
Quality in health care is a standard that applies to the quality of health services in the health sector, whether in hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, medical centers, etc. We help you provide guidance and training to understand the importance of improving quality and performance in health care and the impact of applying accreditation standards on the quality of health services and thus on the members of this community.
Total Quality Standards in Hospitals and Health Centers
Doctors, administrators, and healthcare workers use some standards to improve internal processes that will change the final results to others that will satisfy their patients more.
For example, these standards are founded on the assumption that patients will not wait more than twenty-four hours to contact their doctor by phone.
Because the primary duty of these institutions and health centers is to care for patients and provide these medical services in the best possible way, total quality standards are applied to improve the health services they offer and used as guidelines. These standards can be summarized in the following points:
The impact of applying quality standards on improving health services
These standards are the basis for improving the health care provided to patients with their application, their importance becomes more evident, especially when observing the overall performance of the workers in the health institution. The effects of applying quality standards within treatment centers and hospitals include:
- Satisfying patients and providing them with the best health care.
- Raising the level of health care quality and its continuous development.
- Forming a healthy framework among the workers in these institutions.
Health Quality Management Objectives
When healthcare administrators set their goals for the success of their hospitals and health centers, the success of their endeavor is primarily based on health quality management; this is done through:
- Achieving the required level of efficiency.
- Reducing health care costs.
- Ensuring the best outcomes for patient safety and care.
- Reducing or eliminating harmful effects that can be prevented.
- Enhancing the safety of patients as well as professionals working in health care.
The Guidance for Consulting and Training enables those enrolled in its courses to understand and study the basic principles and concepts of the occupational health and safety management system.
After quality management in health care has become a global initiative, implementing a successful quality management system in medical services has become an urgent necessity to ensure health care and patient safety. Patient safety has become an issue of global importance for more than ten years.
Quality Management and Patient Safety
Patient safety in its abstract sense means “preventing harm to patients”, and patient safety practices are defined as “practices that reduce the risk of harmful events related to exposure to medical care in a range of diagnoses or conditions”, as well as any practice related to its effectiveness in preventing or mitigating harm.
According to information from the World Health Organization, the risk of a patient dying from a preventable clinical event while receiving medical services is 1 in 300, which is much higher than the risk of dying while traveling on an airplane.
Here it becomes clear that unsafe medication practices and misdiagnoses of patients are among the most well-known events that cause harm to patients, directly affecting millions of them around the world.
Quality Objectives in Healthcare
Many health centers and hospitals – in both the public and private sectors – adopt some main objectives for patient care and reaching an appropriate framework for improving quality in healthcare (according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM)), which are as follows:
1- Patient Safety
Maintaining patient safety and providing them with the necessary healthcare during treatment.
2- Effectiveness of Medical Services
Providing the most effective medical services to everyone who can benefit from them, and excluding services that do not provide benefit or better care for patients.
3- Obtaining the service promptly
This is done by reducing the periods patients are forced to wait to receive the healthcare they need, especially if the delay will harm the patients’ condition.
4- Efficiency of the supplies used
Using highly efficient medical equipment and supplies while avoiding their waste.
5- Achieving justice in providing the necessary health care
Providing high-quality medical services to patients regardless of their characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and social and economic status.
6- The patient is the focus of attention
Involving patients in making decisions related to their needs during their health care is always preferable, and ensures that the people concerned with the service are appreciated and respond better.
Guidance for Consulting and Training
We have the knowledge and experience to help institutions and individuals, comply with the requirements of the Saudi Standards and Quality Organization, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, and other entities that impose legal and mandatory requirements in the Saudi market.