Project News Vol.12

The monitoring of CQI activities at both the provincial and district levels was conducted. With an eye on the continuity of future activities and in response to a request from the Department of Healthcare and Rehabilitation (DHR), we have prepared a simplified proposal for revising the quality standards, based on the CQI activities conducted in the four provinces.

On July 3-4, the 6th QHCF Project Joint Meeting was held in Sekong Province. During the meeting, participants from the Ministry of Health and four southern provinces were divided into three groups: the Management Group, the Patient Safety Group, and the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Group. These groups summarized their activities, shared experiences, and discussed future plans.
In the CQI Group, each team presented their CQI activities implemented at provincial hospitals, and they scored their presentation mutually. Additionally, the QHCF Project compiled a manual of the CQI activities to date, which was printed and distributed to the four provinces. Based on this manual, the participants agreed to standardize the composition of in-hospital committees related to quality improvement across the four provinces, simplify the quality standards used in CQI activities, and discuss ways to ensure the sustainability of activities beyond the project's completion.

To promote understanding of patient safety among healthcare professionals and hospital visitors, a short-term expert conducted activities over the course of approximately one month. They compiled the patient safety initiatives that have been implemented by each provincial hospital. The expert visited each hospital to conduct interviews and record videos and create posters and videos addressing the patient safety challenges each hospital is tackling. Additionally, discussions were held with the Ministry of Health and representatives from the four provinces on how to utilize these materials within the hospitals. In alignment with World Patient Safety Day (September 17th), the project plans to organize events within the four provinces, where the posters and videos will also be utilized

The training for improvement of action plan on health insurance-related activities was conducted in May and June. We are progressing with the monitoring of the training in each province.

One of the challenges identified in previous health insurance-related activities is the insufficient awareness of health insurance among both users and staff. To address this issue, we are working on creating and revising health insurance awareness materials. First, to gain a more detailed understanding of the challenges in the field, we conducted a questionnaire survey among health insurance staff at the provincial and district levels in four provinces. Additionally, in late July, a short-term expert arrived to assist with the creation of health insurance awareness materials, and began compiling the survey results and gathering information from the centrally located health insurance call centers.

In the assessments and activities conducted by the project using quality standards, one of the challenges has been how each hospital should approach 'Property Management,' as there had been no clear national guidelines on this matter. After consultations with the Department of Planning and Finance (DOPF) of MOH, and in response to the issuance of national guidelines, we conducted training on hospital property management for the responsible staff at provincial and district hospitals in four provinces in mid-July.