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Palestinian Health Care ISO 9001:2000 at the Arab Specialty Hospital - Nablus

After one year of serious work and efforts from both ID-Consultants and Hospital employees to change the managerial culture and to enhance the quality principles inside the hospital environment, The Arab Specialty Hospital was awarded the International ISO 9001:2000 Certification in Sept-2006. During this period, hospital employees were trained to change their old ways of operations to new ways according to ISO 9001:2000/IWA1 regulations. Major ISO Changes Medical Maintenance and Calibration Before the ISO system was implemented, hospital used to perform medical equipment maintenance process just when needed (corrective maintenance), while after the ISO both preventive and corrective maintenance are going together through a maintenance contract with an external agent. Besides, there were no medical equipment calibrations or verification; now a calibration process for all medical devices including (ECG’s, DC Shocks, Monitors,) is used and verified based on calibration contract with a local agent. Purchasing and Inventory Control Before ISO process, there were no central purchasing process and each department controlled its own purchases; currently a central purchasing performed under the supervision of a purchasing committee is being followed. Regarding the inventories there were no control over the inventories in term of physical account and storing conditions, while now inventory officers control their inventories and become familiar with storing condition instructions. According to head of purchasing committee, the new system of purchasing and inventory control has reduced hospital costs by a high percentage, and this fact has been reflected by some available data: for example, in the past the hospital shop and cafeteria realized a loss of about 500 JD per month, while now it makes a profit of 400-500JD per month. Laboratories Before the ISO, the laboratory role in the hospital was just performing the needed examination only, and now the laboratory participates in hospital improvement especially in medical issues related to laboratory scope of work; for example a documented manual of how to deal with patients' samples was developed and distributed for all medical sections. As a result of documentation, the non-conforming samples dropped from 25samples/month for the period (April to July) to about 8 samples/month for the period August and September. Infection Control In the past, the hospital has no formal infection control activities, but now the hospital follows up a well known infection control activity; for instance the hospital has a swab culture plan and activities to assure that the hospital environment is safe, infection control activities also include water examination to ensure that hospital water is clean. Infection control committee prepares a program for employee screening and vaccination on regular basis. HR Systems The HR manager said “Never being like this; our HR system know is well organized, we can follow the status of each employee through his/her file; we can also determine the needed training through the formal employee evaluation process”. Back