Sunday, February 24, 2013

National database on patient safety to be set up

The Star Online

PETALING JAYA: A national database on performance in patient safety will be set up within the year. The data collected will be used to implement measures that will better safeguard people against preventable medical harm.
The database will require the participation of public and private healthcare organisations to monitor, evaluate and further improve the status of key areas of patient safety.
It will contain data from private and public medical centres, which will ensure the availability of better statistics on patient safety throughout the country.
Such a database will enable healthcare professionals to improve their performances because they will then have baseline data for comparison.
The National Patient Safety Council secretariat said the database will utilise 13 key patient safety goals, with their accompanying performance indicators that medical establishments will have to report on regularly to the council.
“In addition to the patient safety goals, an incident reporting and learning system has been established for government hospitals and health clinics, as well as dental clinics,” according to the secretariat.
“There are 29 incidents that need to be monitored and these include injury to newborn children during delivery, medication error resulting in an adverse result or death, and wrong surgery.”
Previously in the Health Ministry and a number of private healthcare facilities, patient safety was assessed in terms of compliance with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Patient Safety Challenges and local patient safety activities.
Patient safety has increasingly become an important agenda, enough for the WHO to declare it a fundamental principle of healthcare.
The goals, strategies, key performance indicators and targets for the proposed database were drawn up based on Health Ministry and international standards, discussions with key stakeholders, and input from WHO advisers.

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