Quality, Safety and the Patient Experience
Mater Private Healthcare has always operated on the notion that the prerequisite of an efficient healthcare system is one that delivers integrated, safe and patient focused care.
Our commitment to delivering a Quality service is driven, not out of any economic gain but rather in our constant and passionate commitment to patient advocacy and safety, in ensuring that all our patients, their families and our colleagues receive the very best services possible, delivered in an atmosphere of respect, dignity and kindness.
Our approach to Quality and Patient Safety is leadership driven with senior management working collaboratively to develop plans and policies needed to ensure excellent patient care throughout the organisation. We have an established committee called QUEST (Quality Using Effective and Safe Treatments) which oversees the Quality and Patient agenda throughout the hospital.
Data, which is collected through the various sources, is collated to identify problems, formulate programmes for improvement, and change policies and procedures. A key activity of the Hospital’s quality system is to gather relevant and reliable data to measure the effectiveness of the services provided and to benchmark with national and international standards when available. Key to this has been the manner in which the Hospital has strived to enhance its data collection capacity over the last number of years and has made significant progress in establishing a hospital wide quality event reporting system. The Hospital recognises that it needs to enhance its capacity to analyse findings and to continue to source appropriate benchmarks and comparisons. Both the incident reporting and indicator programmes have provided valuable information to allow the Hospital to prioritise its quality goals.
We also strive to accurately capture the Voice of the Patient as we believe that the information we receive helps us, not only to appraise the services we provide, but to hear firsthand the expectations of our patients. Data is obtained from patient feedback through various sources of information including our complaints process, patient surveys, comment cards and a patient forum. The Hospital is committed to the individual development of all hospital services but recognises that we must focus on optimising the performance of the entire system. A key element of this approach is to be aware of the Hospital’s own structures, processes and resources and how these interact. An additional key element is to adopt a systematic approach to quality improvement initiatives; to this end the Hospital encourages the use the principles of the PDCA cycle approach which we have found to be the most productive for monitoring and improving our performances. Each department is encouraged to identify a key area for improvement and to use a systematic approach to reach their goals.
Although we face challenging and changing times ahead we will continue to ensure that the culture of quality and patient safety which we have worked hard to achieve over the last number of years is maintained through a shared perception of its continued importance.
Anna Fitzgerald
Director of Quality
