Overview
Since its establishment in 1983, the MNGHA has seen patient safety as its number one priority. Although it is the job of everyone, the quality and patient safety department (QPS), both at the corporate and regional levels, leads its activities.
The department has several functions, including patient safety, clinical risk assessment, accreditation, medication safety, clinical audit, patient experience, and continuous improvement. The QPS departments measure and monitor all quality domains, namely safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equitability, and patient-centeredness.
We measure patient safety via multiple methods like a safety reporting system (SRS), trigger tools, patient complaints, focused clinical audit, international benchmarking, morbidity and mortality review committees within clinical departments and regions. It has been over a decade now since MNGHA has implemented SRS, and this electronic system is the channel through which staff speaks up for safety.
The Patient Safety Unit (PSU) manages the SRS reports submitted by the MNGHA staff by gathering all relevant information, analyzing incidents` trends, communicating safety issues with leadership and stakeholders, and working jointly with frontline staff to implement and sustain corrective actions measures.
Providing patient care is not risk-free; hence we established the (Second Victim Program) to care for the staff (second victims) when errors occur and implement recovery measures. In this context, we actively seek accrediting our hospitals to standardize their structure, minimize patient safety risks and eliminate errors.
All our hospitals in MNGHA are accredited by Joint Commission International (JCI) and The Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI). Further, we have many other specific programs accreditation for some services like radiology, laboratory services.
Additionally, the MNGHA works closely through QPS with the Saudi medication safety center, and it identifies medication use risks, recommends optimum safeguards, and advances safe medication use practices to prevent adverse drug events across MNGHA.
In MNGHA, the patients and their families are critical partners. Therefore, we established the patient experience units in all regions using a framework encompassing six main domains; timely access to care, staff experience and engagement, information and communication, environment and hospitality, integration and coordination, and patient voice and response. Our patients are in the heart of what we do, part of our success, and they fuel our inspiration to provide them with a unique experience.