LAHORE – A six-member committee, comprising senior health professionals from both public and private sectors, has been constituted to finalise framework for the grading of the licensed hospitals of the Punjab Healthcare Commission within a month.
This was decided at a meeting, held here under the auspices of the Punjab Healthcare Commission, on Friday, which was attended by heads of medical teaching institutions and other leading health professionals with Chief Executive Officer PHC Dr Muhammad Saqib Aziz in the chair.
For the committee, three members – Dr Omar Aziz Rana, Dr Sabir Malik and Dr Haroon Latif– from the private sector, and three members – Vice-Chancellor University of Child Health Sciences Prof Massaud Sadiq, Assistant Professor Fatima Jinnah Medical University Dr Shahid Latif and Principal Allama Iqbal Medical College Prof Nadeem Hafeez Butt – from the public sector were nominated.
VC FJMU Prof Khalid Masood Gondal is the convener, and Director Clinical Governance PHC Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Salariya is the member/secretary of the committee.
Dr Saqib Aziz, in his opening remarks, said that the minimum service delivery standards (MSDS) require all kinds of healthcare establishments to ensure patient safety and make necessary arrangements for the provision of quality care in accordance with the scope of services of the respective hospitals. He was of the opinion that the lukewarm will to implement MSDS and the sustainability of implementation over longer periods were major issues confronting the continuous provision of quality healthcare services, and observed that the implementation of standards would bring betterment to service delivery. He also talked about the need and legal requirements for the grading of hospitals.
Dr Mushtaq Ahmed Salariya presented salient features of the grading framework of the hospitals, and mentioned that all the hospitals would be zoned – red, orange, yellow and green – based on their MSDS Compliance Score, and all the licensed HCEs within the green zone would be graded.
