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December 02, 2005
Touring The Health Scene
Here's an interesting piece of information from an article on health and medical tourism in the region:
To win ... confidence, hospitals competing for medical tourism dollars often turn to credentials they have received from accreditation and certification bodies.These can be presented in a confusing manner, however.
On one Malaysia-focused medical-tourism Web site, you are urged to "Click here to begin searching for a ISO-9002 accredited medical facility."
ISO-9001:2000 certification, as it's officially called, sounds reassuring, but it "isn't specifically a health-care standard," notes Alan Bryden, secretary-general of the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO. [The Wall Street Journal: Healthy travels; subscription required]
Explains Bryden:
"It applies to the processes an organization implements to ensure that it meets the quality requirements of its customers," he adds."If it is implemented by a health-care provider, then it applies to that organization's way of working, but not to the actual medical treatment it provides, nor to the medical devices it uses."
Who owns the website in question?
The Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM), which says:
Most of the private medical centres have achieved certification for internationally recognised quality standards, for example, MS ISO 9002 or accreditation by the Malaysian Society for Quality of Health (MSQH).
APHM's search engine lists 17 hospitals with ISO 9002 certification and 11 with MSQH accreditation; some hospitals have both.
It's important to note that ISO has made the ISO 9002 standard obsolete, and has replaced it with ISO 9001:2000.
The APHM website lists one hospital with ISO 9001:2000 certification.
The Malaysian Society for Quality in Health (not "of Health", as the APHM website has it) counts among its corporate members dozens of private and public hospitals, including 8 of the 11 hospitals listed by the APHM website as MSQH-accredited.
The Wall Street Journal says "a more reassuring" gauge of quality is "accreditation from Joint Commission International, a U.S.-based accreditor of health-care organizations around the world":
"(JCI) standards are designed to improve patient safety, and they address the important functions that are common to all health-care organizations," says Margaret O'Leary, manager of international accreditation at JCI.But fewer than 15 hospitals in the region have received such accreditation.
The JCI website lists eight hospitals in Singapore, one each in Thailand and the Philippines, as well as two each in China and India.
There are none from Malaysia.
Posted by aisehman at December 2, 2005 06:02 PM
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Comments
...and we delude ourselves about how high our standards are. The politicians will probably tell us such ratings don't matter anyway.
Posted by: bayi at December 4, 2005 09:11 PM