His Excellency the Minister of Health, and Head of the Council of Health Services (CHS), Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Rabeeah, announced the establishment of the Patient Safety Center to work as a branch of the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) and to be an important cornerstone continuing its work through training, education, and researches related to the patient's safety, and in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).
He made remarks about the decision of the Health Services Council which affirms the obligation of obtaining the accreditation for the general and private health facilities through the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI). Further, he revealed that the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) is to be transformed into an authority in the near future, as the issue is currently being discussed by the concerned bodies.
This was during his speech in the celebration which was held on Saturday's afternoon to honor the facilities of the Ministry of Health (MOH) which obtained the national accreditation from the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI); their number is 40 hospitals and 4 laboratories.
In the meantime, he affirmed that the quality and development approach, the interest in the patient's security and safety, and gaining their satisfaction is a basic demand and an important goal for the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Health Services Council. He further called on all the health facilities in the private sector to swiftly register in the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) and seriously seek to obtain the accreditation certificate; in order to guarantee the continuity of their licensing and their providing for safe health care, pointing out that the aim of the health accreditation is to set standards for the optimal performance; in order to provide excellent health services and free of errors.
He said that "what pleases me is that the first group, thirty hospitals related to the Ministry of Health (MOH), which was honored before for obtaining the accreditation certificate, from the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI), a number of them efficiently obtained the American certificate of accreditation JCI; this affirms the precision of the CBAHI's standards. Today, we celebrate a great achievement: forty hospitals and four laboratories obtained the certificate of accreditation from the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI). May be praised, we are still on the course of quality and improving the performance, growth, and development in order to serve the giving country, its citizens, and whoever lives on its honorable soil. This is in line with the directives of the leader of our march and the patron of our renaissance, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, his Heir Apparent, and the second Deputy Prime Minister, May Allah Protect them."
For his part, his Excellency the Deputy Minister of Health, and the President of the CBAHI, Dr. Mohammed Khushaim affirmed that obtaining accreditation means that a hospital has succeeded in fulfilling national healthcare standards. This in turn means that a hospital had all the necessary procedures and policies for medical work, and those working at those hospitals developed the ability to identify how an error takes place and the ways to prevent it. He went on pointing out that the medical errors worldwide and at any hospital, result from a weak system or inadequate staff. Therefore, these national measures saw the light of day to set a system and help health workers be more attentive and dedicated during performing their medical work. He also drew attention to the fact that the Kingdom's experiment with regard to establishing this central board is a unique experiment with no equivalent at the level of the Middle East as a whole; it also does not have an equivalent to this Board and such a number of hospitals. Within the same context, he stressed that the quality and its upgrading in the Kingdom's hospitals have become the strategic option for all our health institutions, which will lead to reducing medical errors and preventing them.
Dr. Khushaim went on to add that the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) is on the verge of great developments; the new version of the National Standards which a group of experts and specialists from the Saudi scientific associations and hospital specialists worked on phrasing them is to be issued soon. When phrasing it, all the demands of the international body for recognizing the accreditation councils, known as the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua). It also included all the developments which took place during the last five years. Hence, with Allah's grace, this version is inclusive and complete, does the purpose, and suits the next stage.
For his part, for his part, the Secretary-General of CBAHI, Dr. Salim Al-Wahhabi made clear that the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) works on setting and designing its own national standards, pointing out that the number of interns rose in this year to get up to as many as 156 residents on all specialties: medicine, pharmacology, leadership, quality, infection combat, laboratories, and engineering and safety of the health facility buildings. And the Board is seeking to raise the number of its own residents to have their numbers reach up to some 300 residents during the next two years, Allah willing.
Dr. Al-Wahhabi said that "as far as the health facilities are concerned, during the last years, the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) made hundreds of training, advisory, and evaluative visits for more than 188 hospitals: 89 governmental hospitals and 99 private hospitals, pointing to the 72 hospitals: 51 governmental hospitals and 21 private hospitals obtaining the national accreditation till the end of the last year. He went on adding that among the fifty one governmental hospitals which obtained the accreditation, there are, alone, fifty hospitals related to the Ministry of Health (MOH). In addition to this, the CBAHI is to include as part of its strategic plan for the next five years evaluating and accrediting quite a number of the clinic complexes and private clinics working in the Kingdom, numbering up to two thousand and five hundred governmental and private clinics. Further, it is to accredit hundreds of primary healthcare centers in the Kingdom whose number exceeds two thousand and five hundred centers, mainly distributed among the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Interior, Armed Forces, and National Guards. Thus, this year, the CBAHI began to evaluate and accredit the first one hundred primary healthcare centers related the Ministry of Health (MOH) to be the first fruit of working on this important segment of health services providers in the Kingdom.
After that, his Excellency Dr. Al-Rabeeah handed out the accreditation certificates to the accredited hospitals for 2012, numbering 40 hospitals, as well as distributing the accreditation certificates for the accredited regional laboratories for 2012, numbering 40 laboratories. He also handed out thanks certificates to the members of the National Measures Development Committee for Hospitals, the member of the scientific associations, and the other bodies participating in developing the measures. At the end of the celebration, he inaugurated the CBAHI's new website and the first issue of the Health Accreditation Magazine.