The Management of Sanitary Services of the Health Area of Lanzarote, attached to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, has obtained the ISO 9001 Quality Management certificate, granted by ACCM, Agency for the Certification of Quality and the Environment, for having a quality management system that complies with the requirements of the UNE-EN ISO 9001:2015 Standard.
The Ministry of Health highlights that it is the first year that the Lanzarote management has obtained this accreditation as such because, until now, there was a separate ISO certification, that is, the Pharmacy and Rehabilitation services possessed it. This year, a global certification of the Management was requested, to which, in addition to the two accreditations already obtained, that of the Radiodiagnosis service was added. These health activities are carried out at the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital and at the Valterra, Tías and San Bartolomé health centers.
Specifically, in the Pharmacy service this quality management system includes the establishment and deployment of the pharmaceutical policy, the pharmaceutical validation and the preparation of the medication and dispensing, as well as the pharmaceutical care to guarantee the safety of the medication.
For its part, Rehabilitation includes the rehabilitation services provided in external consultations, care in hospital interconsultations and therapy to hospitalized patients (after the request of the different medical and surgical units and services) and to outpatients, whose origin are the different external consultations of Specialized and Primary Care.
Finally, the Radiodiagnosis service includes the acquisition of images in the surgical area, the performance of simple radiology studies, special radiology studies, studies and procedures guided by ultrasound, studies and procedures guided by CT and studies and breast procedures.
Priority objective
The Ministry of Health points out that, in 2017, "one of the priority objectives of the Lanzarote Management has been to develop a global quality management system based on continuous improvement, excellence and efficient use of resources, in addition to aligning all management systems with standards and other quality projects that are carried out both in Primary Care and in the Hospital".
With this system, the Management will have a comprehensive scorecard, which aligns all management and quality systems: it simplifies the activities of the management team, since it will facilitate monitoring and decision-making; it allows all services, units and centers to visualize their progress; and improves communication and organization of the Health Area.
The importance of quality
"Quality is one of the strategic elements on which the transformation and improvement of modern health systems is based; and it has been reliably demonstrated that the costs of non-quality generate unnecessary repetitions and prolong hospital stays, which increases costs that constitute a significant percentage (which can reach up to 35%) in the overall costs of the center", point out from the regional Executive
The Ministry of Health points out that, in 2008, the Management of Sanitary Services of Lanzarote began its path towards excellence, implementing the EFQM European Excellence Model of total quality. Later, it began to accredit the quality of its services (first the Pharmacy service and then the Rehabilitation service) with the international standards of the ISO model in quality management systems. In addition, the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital has been accredited as a Center Committed to Excellence in Care since 2015.
