Fortis Healthcare awarded Golden Globe Tigers Award for Patient Safety for successful adoption of WHO Surgical Safety Checklist

1107 errors proactively identified and rectified with this practice

New Delhi, May 06, 2015: Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s leading healthcare delivery company,was awarded the prestigious Golden Globe Tigers Award for the category of ‘Best Patient Safety Initiative’ as it successfully adopted and implemented the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSCL) for patient safety and risk minimization in the operating room. Fortis has standardised and implemented a single surgical safety checklist across all Fortis Hospitals in India that has improved consent practice and compliance of the “Fortis Anti-Microbial Stewardship” (AMS) programme, and has also given a boost to employee confidence, improved the efficiency of the system and reduced inter-fraternity barriers.

Fortis has identified Patient Centricity as one of its core value. In order to substantiate this value, it was decided to standardize and implement a single surgical safety checklist (SSCL) across all Fortis hospitals in India. Following the founding principle of medicine – Primum Non Nocere (First Do No Harm), Fortis adopteda global standard of patient safety enunciated by the WHO. Such standardized checklist across all hospitals of Fortis in India and their implementation has improved patient safety and risk minimization in the operating room. This practice has helped to detect 1107 errors. Due to timely response, these errors were proactively rectified. There were 23 errors that could have caused serious patient harm.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr BishnuPanigrahi, Senior Vice President, Medical Strategy and Operations Group (MSOG) said, “It is heartening to be awarded and internationally recognised for our initiative in patient safety and risk minimization in operations room, bound by our guiding principle of patient care. This initiative has helped not only standardized treatment across all Fortis hospitals but also ensured best global safety guidelines.”

Due care has been taken to periodically review efficient implementation of these checklist across Fortis hospitals. At every monthly review meeting that tracks the progress of SSCL implementation; the collated data is analysed and presented in the form of a report and presented to the management for actions.

The campaign was launched under WHO supervision and trainings were conducted among all the stakeholders during the course of its implementation process. The SSCL has been customised to suit Fortis Operation Room (OR) practices. In order to ensure complete implementation, a system to monitor checklist compliance was introduced in all hospitals last year. The use of the checklist has also improved consent practice and compliance of the “Fortis Anti-Microbial Stewardship (AMS) programme, and has also given a boost to employee confidence, improved the efficiency of the system and reduced inter-fraternity barriers.
CCI Newswire