Patient Safety
Our Commitment to Safe Healthcare
Your safety is our priority. Our goal is to make you feel safe and secure while you are in our hospitals. Every member of our staff is dedicated to :
- Providing you with a safe, healthy and secure environment.
- Performing their jobs carefully and competently.
- Using safe and effective practices and technologies.
- Responding to your wants and needs in a timely manner.
- Ensuring timely communications between caregivers and patients by answering questions about your treatment and your health, providing you with specific information about your care and explaining changes about your treatment.
Working with caregivers from across the country, Apollo Hospitals has pioneered to develop industry leading technology, systems, and processes to improve patient care and patient safety. This is just one part of our commitment to providing a broad range of high quality services that meet the growing and changing healthcare needs of our community.
Tracking Our Core Measure Performance
Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals is dedicated to the International Patient Safety Goals and continuously monitors and analyzes it’s performance related to Quality Measures. Each measure tracks a combination of evidence-based procedures that, when consistently implemented, have been shown to reduce the risk of complications and recurrences. The goal is for hospitals to be 100 percent compliant with all quality indicators.
Achieving 100 percent compliance can be a huge challenge. It takes teamwork and dedication by everyone involved in the care process, including frontline caregivers, hospital managers and administrators. Physicians are also key players in quality improvement efforts. Their participation in and support of evidence-based care is essential to achieving the best possible outcomes for patients.
“First, do no harm” – Patient Safety is our foremost priority
Hospitals are scary places to be in. With volumes of investigations, life saving and life threatening medications, life support devices, complex diseases, delicate interventional procedures and marathon surgeries taking place everyday- an error can be disastrous. Yet research shows that medical errors happen very frequently. We, at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, are strongly committed to the safety of our patients. Patient Safety initiatives are an integral part of our operations andform a substantive part of these efforts. In pursuit of our goal of patient safety, Apollo
Hospitals, New Delhi, became the first hospital in India to be accredited by the gold standard in healthcare quality, the Joint Commission International (JCI) in 2005. The JCI accreditation journey involved a multitude of initiatives in improving the various structures and processes involving patient care, staff, equipment and facility. JCI helps us to ensure patients have equal access to care, receive uniform assessment and care processes. Patient rights and education are closely focussed upon along with emphasis on quality improvement and patient safety.
We have a very robust program on prevention of hospital acquired infections. An infection control plan is defined with goals and targets involving implementation of prevention practices, education and training, hand washing surveillance and isolation practices.Our infection rates are now comparable to the best institutes in the world and well below the US National Healthcare Safety Network levels- the US’s most widely used healthcare-associated infection tracking system.
Medication safety emphasizes upon excellence right from selection of the right brands, uninterrupted procurement, storage under the right temperature conditions throughout the hospital, prescription using standardized formularies, prescription audits of all prescriptions to check for errors before dispensing,timely dispensing, preparing medications with all infection control precautions in special laminar hoods and administration with all precautions of right patient, drug, dose and route. Surgical safety is ensured through preoperative site marking, preoperative checklists and a final verification check before the start of the surgery by the whole operating team, called the ‘time out’.
We identify our patients using two identifiers. Verbal orders, if any are verified by read back.We identify all patients who are at a high risk of fall and take all adequate precautions to prevent patient falls. Consultants are appointed through a process of credentialing and privileging which is evidence based. All medical and paramedical staff have their degrees verified from the issuing authorities through primary source verification.Facility and equipment safety is an equally taken care of with preventive maintenance of equipment and mock drills for all possible disasters.
Today, having a 25 year rich experience in Quality Healthcare with most major Apollo Hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission International, Apollo has the wherewithal to provide the highest levels of Patient Safety and best in class services for provision of quality care.