Quality movements worldwide include continuous improvement cycle (USA), Post WWII quality circles (Japan), International Standards Organisation (Europe), total quality management (USA), failure mode and effects analysis (USA) and Quality Improvement (QI) (world wide), said Derick P Pasternak MD, JCI Dubai Office. He was speaking on ‘Is there quality while delivering quality in healthcare’, at the 2nd National Healthcare Conference of HOSMAN organised by the Federation of Hospital Administrators (FHA) in association with the Indian Healthcare Quality Forum and Quality Control of India at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), Kochi. AP Mohd Haneef, DM Ernakulam was the Chief Guest of the conference and Swampoojya Swami Amritaswarupanandaji delivered the benedictory address.

The conference was attended by over 200 delegates across the country. Dr Sanjeev Singh, Senior Hospital Administrator of AIMS, was the Organising Secretary of the conference. Express Healthcare was the official media partner for the event.

Derick further pointed out that QI programmes should include top management, clinical leadership (doctors, nurses, others), front-line caregivers, appropriate support staff, selected vendors, selected customers and QI experts. He emphasised on the PDCA model, which means Plan, Do, Check and Act for QI. He also stressed on the importance of quality tools like run charts, bar charts, histograms, spider diagrams, control charts, scatter diagrams, Pareto charts, table format, dash board reports, cause and effect diagrams and pie charts.

“Quality benefits patients in terms of high quality of care, credentialed and privileged medical staff and access to a quality-focused organisation, understandable education and communication and evaluation of patient satisfaction. It also aids in involvement in care decisions and care process, focus on patient safety, pain management, vulnerable patient, safe transport and continuity of care,” said Dr YP Bhatia, President, Astron and IHCQF, while speaking on ‘Quality in healthcare-Maturity beyond accreditation’.

Speaking on ‘Benchmarking Research’, Raj Warrier, Vice Chancellor, Manipal University, said, “The various types of research are basic translational, clinical—investigator initiated, multicentric—NIH, NCI, University and company sponsored.” The reason India is emerging as a research hub, he elaborated, is because large number of patient pool, faster recruitment and completion, monetary benefits, early intro of drugs and and large range of illnesses and various stages of progression not found in developed countries.

Said MI Sahadullah, Chairman, Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences, while speaking on ‘The 3Ps—Art of building relationship, “Public Private Partnership (PPP) helps improving quality, accessibility, availability, and efficiency, exchange of skills and expertise, optimisation and widening the range of services.” He gave some successful examples of PPPs like Government of Andhra Pradesh funded insurance, New India Assurance Company, CT Scan and MRI services at SMS Hospital, Jaipur and the management of district hospitals with approximately 4,100 beds and medical colleges of Government of Gujarat.

Speaking on ‘Key performance measures in healthcare’, Alamelu Sankaran, Director, Excelsior Global, explained the importance of balance score card and how it can improve efficiency of service.

Speaking on ‘Quality concepts in clinical laboratories and future trends’, Dr GSK Velu, MD, Trivitron, said, “The expectations from a clinical laboratory include quality services such as logistics support for sample pick-up and/or report delivery, easily accessible phlebotomy service, convenient reporting mode, customer friendly pre and post testing telephonic support and transparent approach towards complaints and feedback.” He said quality assurance includes internal quality control, external quality assurance, pre-analytic phase, test standardisation, post-analytic phase, management and organisation. He said quality system essentials include organisation, personnel, equipment/reagents, purchasing and inventory, process control, information management, documents and records, data storage and archival and occurrence management, internal assessment, process improvement, service and satisfaction and facilities and safety.

“If you have a trauma patient, who is connected to all kinds of life supporting system, and you want the image of the whole body. You can do the scan in one go, 200 centimeteres of image and you wheel the patient in the operation theatre. The benefits to the surgeon is unimaginable,” said D Ragavan, Head, Medical Solutions Division, Siemens, while speaking on ‘Automation in healthcare’. He also spoke of imaging that can be conducted in the cathlabs. Talking about Dual slice CT, he informed that it took the engineers four years to build that.

Speaking on ‘Challenges in HR’, Dr Sanjiv Malik, Regional Director, Max Healthcare, said, “One major challenge faced by HR is that of change management in a world which is moving from tightness to looseness, from control to democracy, from direction-led to participatory management, productivity to creativity, from product focus to customer focus.” Leadership development is a critical issue in HR, as unless the leader embraces the change, nothing would change. In the last six months, there has been an attrition rate of 15 to 30 per cent, according to a report, he pointed out. He cited a Hewitt study which stated that 48 per cent of employees leave an organisation because of lack of career growth. He also pointed out to the lack of HR professionals trained in the nuances of working in the healthcare industry. “While hiring a person, we analyse his technical knowledge and experience. But why don’t we find out his behavourial approach?” he asked. He also emphasised on the importance of performance management system to have engaged employees.

While speaking on ‘IT in Healthcare’, Milind Deshpande, Associate VP, HCL System, said, “The focus of the industry is on improving quality and efficiency of service through use of IT.”

Said Dr N Sethuraman, Chairman, Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre, Madurai, while speaking on ‘Inculcating quality culture’, “Quality is what the customer wants/experiences. The various components of competitive edge are quality, innovation, value of money, personal service, flexibility and charity image, brand loyalty, unique selling proposition, customer care culture, communication and commitment.”

The skills needed for quality are communication, inter personal, team building, leadership, problem solving and analytical and decision making, he added.

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