Completely agree with what has been said above. In fact, in most of the organisations, wether healthcare, or otherwise, people either fail to understand the standard or they just do not want to, resulting in poor effectiveness of the system loaded with lots of paperwork and in fact decreasing the performance of the organisation. In turn ---- ISO 9001 gets to be seen in poor light.
I have been involved with implementing ISO 9001 based system at a couple of hospitals (and were certified too). Benefits were seen in -
- Ability to manage and treat increased number of patients,
- Better in-patient care, Faster post-operative recovery,
- Increased effectiveness in follow-up treatment,
- Technological advancements,
- Better attendent care,
- Addition of specialities, and, effectively,
- OT availability for more number of cases per day,
- Educated/Trained staff ready to handle any emergency and guide the patients / attendents, or, better emergency preparedness,
- Faster retrieval of equipments, medicines etc, both, in planned and unplanned (emergency) cases,
- Smoothly addressing Consumer grievances whenever required (primarily because of maintaining appropriate records and good control),
- Faster and accurate response to queries / requirements of the district administration / Government.
These were a few coming to my mind offhand. The entire credit goes to the management, doctors, and the staff of the hospitals who were committed to
the cause of providing good healthcare service to the society. I was only a facilitator helping them to develop and implement an effective system -
effectively. The approach was usual as with any other organisation. The steps taken were the same, except in this case, discussions were more often, and it took more time to establish the system due to the varying and heavy schedules effecting the availability of the practicing Doctors, Management and staff.