Our center confirmed healthcare quality and patient safety level

Nadezhda Lystsova, our Project manager, told about preparation for external audit, expert assessment; and significance of certificate for our center, our employees and patients.

She shared that the certification was voluntary and recertification took place every three years! Our center participated in own volition! To her mind that fact was, of course, important: our center confidently met basic requirements of quality management system, and was confirmed achievements of basic results during new system implementation; further development would be provided by continuous improvement. The new system implementation started with foundation of quality control department to conduct internal control in our center at the beginning of 2021. As for Nadezhda Lystsova, internal control was the main tool for ensuring the quality and safety of medical environment. Obviously, introducing new system was complicated process that needed time and resources, including human resources, but on the other hand, Nadezhda Lystsova said, that it was very interesting, creative process, ability to work collaboratively. Our center was formed 14 multidisciplinary working groups, developed «responsibility matrix» to strengthen those groups, involving all employees in procedures, since opinion of each employee, both medical and non-medical, was important. It was not a secret that every stage of medical care provision, every manipulation, and every intervention had certain degree of risk and it was important to prevent or minimize progress of undesirable events by creating special principles on employee safety culture as a part of job duties.

Nadezhda explained that external experts participated in the process of implementing the new system were guarantors of audit objectivity and effectiveness of developed measures. That system had been developed by National Institute of Healthcare quality taking into account international standards. Analysis of organization and internal control conduction was carried out in 14 areas in our clinic, including quality management and safety of medical environment, personnel management, patient identification, epidemiological safety and prevention of infections associated with medical care provision, drug safety and pharmacovigilance, proper handling of medical equipment, urgent aid and emergency care, succession of medical care provision; surgical, transfusiological, environmental safety; patient care and medical care provision based on evidence-based medicine, patient-centricity. Our specialist mentioned that all audits were fundamentally educational in nature and our center needed those to confirm internal control activities carried out correctly.

Nadezhda Lystsova said that paperwork management was complicated and considerable process. In a weekly format, working groups discussed procedures, algorithms of actions, instructions, checklists of work processes, then adapted them to workplaces and improved them in the future. Any developed standard helped our team to conduct training in a timely manner, monitor the correctness of its implementation and, as a result of our cooperative work, to make work processes more efficient. She also shared her satisfaction and gratefulness regarding effectiveness of formed documents, when they migrated from the «red zone», to the «yellow», and then to the «green»! Based on results of project implementation, it was important to monitor quantitative indicators according to each section of Federal Healthcare Supervisory Agency guidelines; our statistical data was accumulated and summarized at the first stage of basic settings implementation that ensured quality and safety of medical environment; dynamics of new system action plan put into practice was recognized positive. That was motivation for our center to improve work processes in order to maintain adequate level of knowledge and skills for employees and our patients.

Globally speaking, such certification of the institution was an effective tool for confirmation of quality and safety of medical activities and was aimed at standardizing processes of medical environment, reducing risks for patients and healthcare workers, as well as minimizing possible errors in the provision of medical care.