Fortis Healthcare awarded Golden Globe Tigers Award for patient safety

The award is for successful adoption of WHO surgical safety checklist, 1107 errors proactively identified and rectified with this practice

Fortis Healthcare was awarded the Golden Globe Tigers Award for the category of ‘Best Patient Safety Initiative’ as it successfully adopted and implemented the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSCL) for patient safety and risk minimisation in the operating room. Reportedly, Fortis has standardised and implemented a single surgical safety checklist across all Fortis Hospitals in India that has improved consent practice and compliance of the ‘Fortis Anti-Microbial Stewardship’ (AMS) programme, and has also given a boost to employee confidence, improved the efficiency of the system and reduced inter-fraternity barriers.

Following the founding principle of medicine – Primum Non Nocere (First Do No Harm), Fortis adopted a global standard of patient safety enunciated by the WHO. Such standardised checklist across all hospitals of Fortis in India and their implementation has improved patient safety and risk minimisation in the operating room. This practice has helped to detect 1107 errors. Due to timely response, these errors were proactively rectified. There were 23 errors that could have caused serious patient harm, informed a press release.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Bishnu Panigrahi, Senior VP, Medical Strategy and Operations Group (MSOG) said, “It is heartening to be awarded and internationally recognised for our initiative in patient safety and risk minimisation in operations room, bound by our guiding principle of patient care. This initiative has helped not only standardised treatment across all Fortis Hospitals but also ensured best global safety guidelines.”

Due care has been taken to periodically review efficient implementation of these checklist across Fortis Hospitals. At every monthly review meeting that tracks the progress of SSCL implementation; the collated data is analysed and presented in the form of a report and presented to the management for actions. The campaign was launched under WHO supervision and trainings were conducted among all the stakeholders during the course of its implementation process.