NewsDetail
Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) tertiary hospitals have come through a comprehensive series of inspections by the internationally-renowned Joint Commission International (JCI) with flying colors.
HMC’s four tertiary hospitals - Women’s Hospital (WH), Hamad General Hospital (HGH), Heart Hospital (HH) and the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) – provide specialist care services for patients with cancer, heart conditions and those requiring surgery, as well as maternity and pediatric care for women and newborns.
New technology, services and processes have been implemented to improve quality and patient experience at all four tertiary hospitals in line with the JCI’s stringent healthcare standards.
In December 2015, NCCCR opened the region’s first CyberKnife Suite. Located in the Department of Radiation Oncology, the CyberKnife Suite offers a revolutionary treatment technology for cancer. Dr. Noora Al Hammadi, Senior Consultant Radiation Oncologist and Chair of Radiation Oncology explained the benefits: “The new CyberKnife Suite technology is able to treat tumors in most parts of the body more accurately - meaning high radiotherapy doses can be delivered to the tumor site with less side effects and damage to the surrounding healthy tissues.”
“The CyberKnife Suite adds to the NCCCR’s existing range of radiation treatments for cancer and improves the quality and safety of care, with faster recovery and fewer side effects for our patients,” noted Dr. Hammadi.
HGH officially opened its new Pediatric Continuity Clinic at the end of 2015. The clinic features eight themed treatment rooms providing care for general outpatient services for children. The clinic is staffed by a multi-disciplinary care team and is operated under a patient-centered model.
“Children regularly visiting the clinic will be seen by the same multi-disciplinary team on each visit, creating a closer relationship between the patient, family and care team. By ensuring continuity of care for patients the clinic improves quality and safety standards within the clinic,” said Dr. Yousef Al Maslamani, Medical Director at HGH.
Quality and safety has also been at the forefront of recent improvements at Heart and Women’s hospitals. WH has successfully implemented a lifesaving quality improvement project for babies born prematurely. The Golden Hour Delivery Room Management project adopts evidenced-based practice to provide the best possible care to extreme preterm babies.
HH opened its Advanced Heart Failure Unit last year to provide specialized multi-disciplinary care for people living with advanced heart failure. The new unit offers state-of-the-art treatment and monitoring technology and plays a significant role in attending to patients’ physical, emotional and psychological needs, and in improving the quality of care they receive.
“The services at all four of HMC’s tertiary hospitals were comprehensively measured against the highest international standards as part of the JCI inspections. The results endorsed their high standards of quality and safety,” stated Prof. Adeel Butt, Interim Chief Quality Officer for HMC and the Director of the Hamad Healthcare Quality Institute.
Following the completion of two months of rigorous assessment, HMC has become the first healthcare system across the globe to have all of its hospitals accredited by JCI under the Academic Medical Center program.
“This is an incredible achievement for HMC. JCI accreditation is based on quality and safety across all clinical and management functions and is considered the gold standard in global healthcare,” added Prof Butt.
