Sudhir Ketkar

Dear Nitin, I am Sudhir Ketkar an ex IAF officer of medical branch. Application of quality system has ample scope in HCOs. One should first determine the processes which are pretty much the same in HCOs. The basic idea is process improvement to achieve optimum efficiency. starting from registration to outpt consultation, in-patient care, admissions, discharges, Operating room, rehabilitation, health education etc provide ample scope for application of quality as support function. Measure their efficiency of each process by means of patient satisfaction/ feed back, costing, time motion studies, incidences of errors etc. In medical practice, check lists have found to be a great use. Investigations of sentinel events and corrective actions can lead to immense improvement. FMEA on non-sentinel events in processes like hemodialysis, catheterization laboratories, pathology laboratory, identification of patients, etc can serve a great deal. The statistics say that nearly 90000 people die in the USA every year on account of medical errors. In India, it is not a tradition to record/ accept medical errors hence rate of occurrence is hard to determine. Hospital acquired infection is one of the causes. More emphasis, stream lining the CSSD work can reduce the HAI. bringing the air exchange rate in the operating room can reduce the HAI to a great degree. This is only a few salient points that I have given if I have got your question right. I personally believe that in our country bringing an era of quality in HCOs is an absolute must. with regards sudhir ketkar