The Nations Healthcareer Alumni Meeting
"International Management Approaches to Health Services: Accreditation, Certification, Quality and Performance Management"
If you ever thought that quality topics and certification issues might be boring, stressful or even harmful for any organisation, being in Frankfurt for this meeting (29 October) would have taught you otherwise.
First, you learn that one ‘certification expert’ cannot handle certification and accreditation: It involves the entire company or hospital, beginning with the CEO. Second, once you start thinking about getting your organisation certified, you are already half way towards creating a better organization. One way or another, these points were emphasised by all the speakers, including Paul van Ostenberg and Eirian Lewis, whose articles are printed on this page.
Professor Sibbel, Fresenius Chair for International Health Management at HfB, underlined the struggles of German hospitals as they move towards becoming service and market-oriented institutions, which demands legally-driven quality management.
Cheong Choy Fong, Director of Human Resource Development, Alexandra Hospital, Singapore, who presented an integrated approach to the implementation of quality management from Asia, summarised the level of effort needed to get a service-oriented and patient-friendly institution thus: ‘Image you will have to bring your mother to the hospital!’ The Alexandra hospital has been so ambitious in its outcome improvements, that besides its ISO 9001 and 14000, EQM, JCI, Six Sigma certification, it has even participated in Toyota’s production system.
Hospital managers from Germany, Austria and Dubai also presented experiences on the long route to full accreditation. Finally, theoretical aspects of data collection and the diversity of European Healthcare systems were presented by Dr Nikolas Matthes and Dr Ann-Lise Guisset, of the Ministry of Health, Brussels.
For further details on this lively, in-depth seminar, go to: www.nations-healthcareer.com.
Or contact: Dagmar Möller at HfB. Phone: +49-(0)6171-9704217
23.05.2006
