ISO 9001:2000 In Hospitals

[Gohary]

Dear Quality Proffessionals

Any one have a guide line or presentation , on how to establish a quality management system in clinic and hospitals.

[Randy]

Probably the same way you would a pizza factory. Identify what your product is and how you will manage the quality of it to achieve customer satisfaction.

The process of establishing a QMS in a hospital is no different than anywhere else, all that changes is the product, the customer and the specific processes involved in product realization and customer satisfaction.

[Graeme]

A good place to start looking for resources is the web page of the ASQ Healthcare Division. Their "Additional Resouces" page has links to a large number of other quality-oriented healthcare organizations.

[Gohary]

Dear Randy

Your answer is really good , I know what is the starting point in developing any management system , but can you please tell me what are the benefit of implementation and ISO9001:2000 system to a hospital , and please don't tell me the genaric benefits , which is customer focus .....etc , i mean real benefits that you can tell to top management.

Gohary said:
can you please tell me what are the benefit of implementation and ISO9001:2000 system to a hospital , and please don't tell me the genaric benefits , which is customer focus .....etc , i mean real benefits that you can tell to top management.

Hello Gohary

I hope this helps....

There is no automatic benefit from ISO 9000, and especially not from simply implementing ISO 9001 on its own - OTHER than opening up business if an organisation's customers are impresssed by an ISO 9001 certificate.

ISO 9004 tells us "the adoption of a quality management system should be a strategic decision by the top management of an organization". So you can't TELL your hospital's top management what the benefits will be from their own QMS. You can only help them figure out what the benefits are going to be - essentially by implementing the PDCA cycle as defined in 9001/0.2. Their objectives will define the benefits.

If you can find success stories from other hospitals, that might help indicate what benefits are possible. But none of them will come automatically from simply implementing 9001.

Finally, I wish you, your family and your colleagues well in the events that are about to unfold in your region.

As you can imagine with the state of hospital / healtcare facility finances today, they are strongly motivated by trying to get/stay profitable.

To that end, a healthcare facility lives and dies by its accreditation. Accredited facilities are eligible for re-imbursement through the government. As the old Apollo 13 movie went; "no bucks...no buck rogers."

Whats all this got to do with a QA program? The main accreditation organization is JCAHO (Joint Comission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations). They generate the standards for facilities of this nature. These standards run the full gambit of business areas and put focus on risk assessment and CAPA systems. In essence they are like an ISO organization.

Inside the hospital, the JCAHO effort is usually headed up by a QA person or group. QA systems & management in a hospital environment are not as you would recognize; they are either under the auspices of a nurse, a bio-med, or a risk managment group (again, screw up accreditation, big risk to your financing).

JCAHO has standards and about every 4 years, they come out and see if the facilities "programs" measure up to the standards. If they don't you can have up to 2 years to improve as long as you show progress.

To the best of my knowledge, there is not good reason for a US hospital to chase ISO certification; especially when they are always complaining about costs and manpower issues. About the only way I can think of that there might be an interest is if the hospital is affiliated with a corporation that has other core businesses that require certification and that the corporation would like to see all their business units complying to the same standard.

Hope this helps a bit.
Regads,
Dave Gronostajski

[Sidney Vianna]

From http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/s...24/daily9.html

DNV Healthcare Inc., a Houston-based, third-party hospital assessment company, has received notification from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that its application to rule hospitals in compliance with the Medicare Conditions of Participation has been accepted for formal review.
If approved, DNV could become the first new provider of hospital accreditation in more than 40 years.
According to the notification from CMS, the formal review period began March 12, 2008, and a 30-day public comment period will begin in late April.
"This is a turning point, not just for us, but for the many hospitals seeking a new approach," said Yehuda Dror, president of DNV Healthcare.
"Healthcare spending is over $2 trillion a year, yet preventable medical errors are still on the rise. Hospitals don't need more pressure to improve, they need the tools that will help them change the system from within. If we can innovate the accreditation process, we give hospitals the key to systemic change."
DNV has developed the National Integrated Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations program which blends ISO 9001 quality management with Medicare's Conditions of Participation for Hospitals.
The result, the company said, is a more streamlined accreditation process that captures "best practices" and turns them into standard practices across the organization, leading to sustainable, continual improvement.
DNV Healthcare Inc. is a division of DNV, an independent foundation with 300 offices in 100 countries.
Last August, DNV Healthcare acquired TUV Healthcare Specialists, a Cincinnati-based hospital accreditation firm. The company said at the time that the acquisition would help support its efforts to gain recognition from the CMS.

Check also http://www.newaccreditation.com for more information on this alternative hospital accreditation process.

[somerqc]

Although I am in Canada, this needs to be seriously considered even in a publicly run system.

I was required to use the healthcare system last week. Yes, it just cost me time and taxes off of my paycheque (don't go there!). My experience could be one of the worst experiences ever. Due to a lack of resources (ISO clause 6.2) and a lack of a system to handle the issue I needed to have taken care of (clause 7.1? or 4.1?) resulted in 13.5 hours in an emergency waiting room for a 10 minute procedure (clause 8.1)!! (could there even be a finding under Management Commitment?).

I could understand this if there was some analysis and decisions to be made; however, this was already diagnosed and test results from the same day were given to us before we went to the hospital!!

Let me tell you, I would have been willing to drive to Buffalo to take care of it if I knew what the price would have been. It was that frustrating and disappointing.

Maybe that could be my next job - fixing the healthcare system. Nope...too many politicians involved!

John