Dr. Jorge Parajón, representative of the Patient and Environment Quality and Safety Committee and responsible for the Quality Management System of the Maternity Institute, highlighted that they have been certifying for seven years.
The professional said that some services have been incorporated over the course of this year. In December 2023, the last external audit was carried out by the DIU, which is the International Organization that gives Quality Certification according to ISO 9001-2015 Standards, where 17 processes were certified. “Of those, 9 are healthcare, 2 are diagnostic and 6 are support. This year we incorporated two more processes, one healthcare and one support, so we would have 19 processes certified by the ISO standard this year,” he highlighted.
Parajón highlighted the importance of ISO standards by saying that, beyond having the certificate or recognition through a certificate or a diploma, these are an instrument that, applied especially in the health system, allows optimizing everything that are the processes and improving the results: “In addition, we must add the fact that when you improve a care process, with a quality approach focused on risk, you are also improving the use of the resource and optimizing the expense and the cost that goes associated with health, which today is high. Fundamentally it impacts the result, which is patient care.”
On the occasion, the professional explained that in order to certify, there must first be a strategic decision by Management to enter into a change in the organizational culture. Once the decision has been made, the incorporation of standards to all these processes is requested, which are international, highly regulated and strict in many points to be met.
“There is a structure that must be developed, which is based on process management and you also have to comply with minimum management issues, such as monitoring indicators. We must have traceability of some data depending on the service and all of that is standardized and must be fundamentally documented and supported with demonstrable evidence,” he maintained.
Parajón stated that when this entire implementation and development process is completed, an external consultant, which is an international organization, is requested to do an audit. The external auditor audits the service where the process is being applied and when he considers that one meets the minimum standards established by ISO standards, he recommends certification, makes a technical report of what he saw and passes it on to the international reference organization.
