Dr Arvind Balakrishna Kasaragod, Director of Medical Services, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals explain how the quality departments play a pivotal role in safeguarding public health by enforcing policies and protocols that ensure consistent, high-quality care
In modern healthcare, patient safety is not just a goal—it’s a necessity. With increasing complexities in medical treatments, a growing number of patients seeking care, and the rapid pace of innovation, ensuring safety is paramount. At the heart of this effort are healthcare quality departments, which work diligently to uphold and improve standards that protect patients. These departments play a pivotal role in safeguarding public health by enforcing policies and protocols that ensure consistent, high-quality care. While we all know that the primary goal of healthcare organisations is to provide the best preventive and curative care, unfortunately in India, the daily regulatory oversight of every healthcare institution is nearly impossible. Therefore, it falls on each organisation to ensure that safety protocols and standards are consistently maintained.
The foundation of patient safety
Patient safety is often viewed through the lens of preventing medical errors, but it encompasses far more. It involves minimising risks, preventing harm, and ensuring that healthcare systems are organised to deliver reliable care. Mistakes in healthcare can have dire consequences—anything from incorrect diagnoses to medication errors or surgical mishaps. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), medical errors harm millions of patients annually, with many of these errors being preventable. This is where quality departments become the backbone of healthcare institutions. They establish rigorous standards and implement processes to prevent such errors, ensuring that every patient receives care based on best practices. Their role is to scrutinise systems, assess outcomes, and continuously drive improvement. Quality departments not only protect patients but also reinforce public trust in healthcare systems. When people know that a facility adheres to stringent quality measures, they are more likely to seek care with confidence there. Many organisations seek accreditation from bodies like NABH to foster a culture of safety and efficiency. However, NABH accreditation is merely the starting point in an organisation’s quality journey. It doesn’t guarantee daily quality control; healthcare institutions must uphold these standards themselves. This is where the role of the quality department becomes critical.
The role of quality departments in shaping policy
Beyond operational tasks, quality departments have a significant influence on healthcare policy. They bridge the gap between clinical care and regulatory frameworks, ensuring that policy development is grounded in real-world data and outcomes. By monitoring patient outcomes and analysing the root causes of adverse events, they provide critical data that can shape national safety standards and healthcare regulations.
For instance, infection control has long been a focus of quality departments, but the COVID-19 pandemic made their role even more central. Many hospitals leaned on their quality departments to develop rapid, effective strategies for infection prevention and control. This data-driven response helped inform broader public health guidelines and policies, demonstrating how critical these departments are in shaping both hospital-level and national strategies.
Patient safety is a public health issue. When patients are harmed by preventable errors, the effects ripple across society. The financial burden of medical errors alone is staggering; in the U.S., preventable medical harm costs billions annually. For individuals, such errors can result in long-term health complications or even death. Moreover, these incidents often result in loss of trust in healthcare institutions, creating barriers for people seeking medical help when they need it most.
A well-organised quality department not only prevents harm but promotes a culture of safety throughout the entire healthcare organisation. From nurses to physicians to administrative staff, patient safety becomes a shared responsibility. A culture of safety ensures that everyone in the healthcare system is vigilant, aware, and empowered to speak up when something seems wrong.
Government agencies and public health organisations must recognise the crucial role quality departments play and ensure they are adequately supported. This includes funding for training, adopting new technologies for real-time monitoring of patient safety metrics, and maintaining rigorous accreditation standards. Public policy should advocate for system-wide accountability in patient safety, ensuring that healthcare institutions are not only compliant but actively improving their safety protocols.
Empowering patients through transparency
Another key element in patient safety is transparency. Patients have a right to know about the safety practices of the institutions where they seek care. In many countries, the move towards value-based care is pushing for more transparency in healthcare outcomes, which is critical for empowering patients to make informed decisions about where they receive treatment. Quality departments must work towards making patient safety data accessible and understandable to the public. This aligns with broader public health goals—if patients are more informed, they are more likely to engage in their care and be advocates for themselves.
One of the most valuable tools available to make all of the above happen is the incident reporting system. I have used this extensively wherever I have worked. Every stakeholder in the system is empowered to report adverse incidents, either of omission or commission in a timely manner. These incident reports are reviewed, a root cause analysis is done and corrective and preventive actions are identified. These actions are converted to policies and processes and implemented after everyone is trained. Once they are implemented periodic audits are done and based on that retraining and repeat audits are done until the processes are institutionalised. The most important part of this entire reporting process is that it should be non-judgmental, non-punitive and ideally anonymous. This is not a process intended to blame or shame anyone but a process to keep everyone and the organisations honest.
As healthcare continues to evolve, the role of quality departments will only grow in importance. With the rise of artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and personalised medicine, new risks and challenges will emerge. Quality departments must adapt, leveraging data and innovation to anticipate these challenges and uphold the highest standards of care. Ultimately, patient safety is not just a matter of individual care; it is a fundamental pillar of public health. Ensuring that every healthcare institution has a strong, proactive quality department is essential to building safer healthcare systems and a healthier society.