Maldives healthcare quality standards

Abstract

The government has two objectives in setting these Healthcare Quality standards- firstly to ensure the service guarantees that it has made are honoured and secondly, to ensure that there is a conscious effort to address the quality dimension, so as to ensure that services provided are not only effective but also safe, comfortable and are rendered with dignity. Also the government recognises that a commitment to quality requires an approach of continuous improvement, where provision of quality services becomes part of the work culture. The Ministry of Health endeavors to ensure that the community accessing a facility is assured for availability of Services, which meets predefined quality bench-marks. The Quality Assurance Standards along measurable elements for each level of health facility are being published to help in measuring Quality of care. We believe in the words of James H Harrington that ’If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” It also needs to be remembered that that end-objectives of implementing Quality of Healthcare (QoC) at health facilities is not achieved by the assessment merely, if no action gets taken for closure of the gaps, which are found on assessment. I would urge all officials of Ministry of Health, Hospitals and Health Centers to continuously review the performance of health facilities, and take required steps for improving it. I wish to acknowledge support of WHO Country Office in formulation and development of these Quality Standards, a standard that also meets the international norms in measuring quality of healthcare.