Patient Safety and Quality Care

Introduction

Our main objective is to achieve maximum well-being in each of our patients and, to accomplish this, we strive every day to offer specialized care that guarantees the best health results in an environment in which every detail is important to offer the best possible experience to the patient

 

The commitment of our team of collaborators, medical and professional staff has allowed us to be recognized nationally and internationally for providing the highest standards of quality in health care, which places us among the 20 best hospitals in Latin America

 

What does quality mean in health care?

The quality in health care is based on three fundamental pillars:

 

1. Clinical results, which indicate how successful our care and treatments are and how they influence the recovery of our patients

 

2. Patient safety, a set of measures aimed at avoiding the occurrence of incidents and unwanted events during the care process

 

3. Patient experience, which guides all our efforts to identify and solve all the needs of our patients from their admission to recovery and discharge

 

Here you will find a scientific, human, timely and efficient service provided by each of our employees and led from the highest level of management

How do we measure quality?

The Quality and Patient Safety Management evaluates a set of quality indicators validated by prestigious institutions such as the World Health Organization and Joint Commission International

 

These indicators allow us to constantly improve the care provided to our patients by generating improvement projects and preventive activities in each of our processes

 

Indicators

Unequivocal identification of the patient

The unambiguous identification of the patient is an international patient safety goal that seeks to ensure at all times that the right person receives the indicated service or treatment. It also allows us to identify specific situations of each patient such as allergies or other conditions that require special care that all staff must know

 

Control of high risk medications

Proper management of medications is essential to ensure the safety of hospitalized patients. High Risk Medications are those, by their nature, must be prescribed, stored, and administered under a rigorous safety protocol whose compliance is monitored very closely in our hospital

 

Prevention of Infection

Hospital infections are unwanted situations that may occur in patients due to different factors including their own state. At Clínica Ricardo Palma, there is an Infection Control Program that implements measures that have proven effectiveness at reducing the risk of this type of complications, allowing us to reach infection rates below those of our peers

 

  • Global rate of infections associated with health care

 

  • Compliance with the hand hygiene policy

 

Fall Prevention

Worldwide, patients’ falls off of their bed or of other places, represent an important cause of injuries in hospitalized patients. We actively work on strategies aimed at avoiding as much as possible the occurrence of these incidents with very encouraging results

 

  • Global fall rate

 

Opportunity in care

Care opportunity is the possibility patients have to request the services they require according to their condition without delays that they put their lives or health at risk, this effort includes therapeutic results

 

  • Percentage of patients with waiting time until receiving care by the emergency physician of less than 30 min

 

  • Percentage of critical laboratory results reported in less than 10 minutes

 

Re-admittance to emergency

Medical care results can be measured in different ways. One of them is to evaluate the return of patients to emergency after a first attention in a period of time, this indicator motivates us to guarantee a comprehensive attention to each patient in order to address their urgent health problem in a comprehensive way

 

  • Percentage of patients who are readmitted to emergency within 24 hours

 

Patient Journey

According to Beryl Institute, the patient’s experience is “the result of all interactions generated by the culture of an organization that influence the patient’s perception throughout the continued care”. At service level, this means that all the processes of the organization must take into account that the patient goes first

 

  • Net promoter scores (NPS)