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Govt. moves to crack down on medical errors
— New national push targets hospital quality, patient safety
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony speaking during the launch of a National Initiative for Hospital Quality and Patient Safety at the ministry’s Brickdam office.
(Kaieteur News) – In a major push to tighten standards and reduce medical errors, the Ministry of Health has teamed up with the Mount Sinai Health System to roll out a nationwide initiative aimed at improving patient safety and hospital quality across Guyana’s expanding healthcare network.
The launch was held at the opening of a two-day workshop by the ministry which focuses on implementing the new initiative. According to information provided by the ministry, this initiative supports Guyana’s broader vision to modernise its health services and expand access to high-quality care. The new, state- of-the-art regional hospitals are already transforming healthcare access by bringing advanced diagnostic, surgical, and emergency services closer to communities, the ministry said.
This development reduces the need for patients to travel long distances to Georgetown for specialized care, ensuring more timely and efficient treatment. Delivering brief remarks at the ceremony, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, underscored the importance of improving service quality across all health facilities. “As we work towards improving quality, we must prioritize coordination,” Dr. Anthony stated. He noted that they are also looking at establishing a Hospital Quality Improvement Council, which will provide broad oversight for the implementation process.”
“The minister further explained that Regional Health Officers will play a critical role in advancing this agenda by establishing regional quality councils. Additionally, each healthcare institution will form dedicated committees to drive and monitor quality improvement efforts at the facility level,” the ministry reported.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday during the launch of ‘Project ECHO’ another collaborative initiative with Mount Sinai, the minister in his address said that they recognize in any healthcare system that they are going to be medical errors, and this is something health authorities want to reduce. “I was in a meeting earlier this morning (Wednesday) with some folks that are dealing with patient safety, and one of the statistics that jumped out at me was that they said in developed countries, there are four mistakes to every 10 persons that are being seen, and that’s quite a lot, and in developing countries, it’s even more,” he shared.
He said that in the ministry, they are going to develop a Quality-of-Care Unit, and the purpose of that Unit he said is that they are going to visit and check in different facilities to ensure healthcare workers are compliant with all guidelines they have produced.
“We don’t want this to be punitive. We want to go out first to make sure that people understand guidelines, for example, like the one that was shown earlier with diabetes, and that we are following it. That’s the reason why we spend time to develop the guidelines. But if we develop these guidelines and then people are not following it, then that can easily lead to errors,” he disclosed.
The minister said they want healthcare providers to follow the guidelines and if they see anything wrong, these medical professionals will be called for a discussion to have the problem fixed. “I think by continuously working to improve our system, we would get better and a system that is built on continuous improvement, we are going to see better outcome for patients, and that’s the end goal here,” he mentioned.
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