Hyderabad: State Government hospitals have been maintaining questionable quality. In order to address this condition, health authorities identified over 52 government health institutions in Telangana to target National Quality Assurance Certification, which is accredited by International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua), in 2017-18.
“Efforts to bag the ISQua certification are already underway,” said senior health officials at Commissioner of Health and Family Welfare and National Health Mission.
The government adopted National Quality Assurance Programme (NQAP) in health services and constituted a unified organisational structure at the State, district and field level, which are already operational. As part of the NQAP structure, close to 30 District Quality Assurance Managers (DQAMs) were appointed.
By August 2017, a majority of the over 52 public health institutions, which include many from Hyderabad, will come under extensive checks and inspections by third-party experts to get State quality assurance certification.
“Six district hospitals, 30 area hospitals, two Mother and Child Health (MCH) Centres, two Community Health Centre’s (CHCs) per district and 12 Primary Health Centres (PHC) per district have been identified for the national certification this year,” said Health officials.
“We are aware and identified gaps that have to be filled in order to achieve the National Quality Assurance Standards. There is lot of deficiencies in field and district levels than in tertiary facilities. Efforts are on to close these gaps and deficiencies,” senior officials said.
The Primary Health Centre at Bheempur in Adilabad district was the first health centre in Telangana to receive the National Quality Assurance Certification (NQAC).
A Supportive Supervision Visits (SSV) has been introduced to improvise the situation of hospitals across all health facilities.
Since November 2016, a team of experts were visiting all health facilities in 31 districts to identify gaps in healthcare delivery. The team mentors field staff and solves problems at the ground level. Frequent SSVs are taken up at all urban and primary health centres, senior officials said.