The quest for quality at NHG is relentless.
Quality standards, benchmarked against the world’s best, are a top priority in NHG. Quality, an abiding tenet, defines and distinguishes who we are at home and abroad.
In building a culture of safety in our hospitals and clinics, we make quality everybody’s business – from the Board members right down to the hospital attendants. Strong leadership and clear lines of responsibility help to transform our culture, work methods and healthcare delivery systems.
Policies and goals for clinical, operational and service quality are implemented through our vertically integrated NHG Quality & Safety Framework. This tightly woven structure enables our top managers, clinicians, nursing staff and administrators to strategise, implement, monitor, improve and correct the quality of NHG’s patient-centred care.
Managing or reducing risks, inherent in medical care, is central to our quality policy. It covers areas such as the following:
- Pre-empting adverse events
- Improving clinical processes
- Monitoring clinical risk indicators
- Root cause analysis for adverse events
- Improving our methodologies
Our aim is to make improvements sustained and ongoing. Patient care quality is improved and costs are controlled or reduced. An added boon is improved communication, problem solving skills and a teamwork mindset among our staff.
The Clinical Practice Improvement Programme (CPIP)
is our driving force for clinical quality improvements.
It reduces variations in clinical practice and implements
new clinical concepts and processes in a culture of
continuous improvement.
The programme empowers groups of clinician champions
– be they doctors, nurses or allied health professionals
- to lead clinical projects with potential significant
impact on clinical results, patient safety, costs and
patient satisfaction.
E.g. an NUH project successfully reduced unnecessary
admission for febrile seizures by 50%. At TTSH, a phlebitis
project successfully reduced infection rate from 26%
to less than 1%. This best practice was subsequently
selected to be spread across NHG hospitals. Another
project, championed by AH, successfully achieved for
all patients with Open Reduction Internal Fixation,
Incision & Drainage and Ray Amputation surgeries
a pain score of 3 or less within 48 hours of surgery.
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