18 May 2010
By Surbhi Khyat
Lucknow, India
THE Department of Family Welfare is all set to introduce the Family Friendly Hospital Certificate (FFHC) for government hospitals in the state under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
The FFHC will be given in periods of three to six months and will be a first step for hospitals desirous of getting standardisation certificates given by International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), National Accreditation Board for Hospital and Healthcare Providers (NABH) and Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) The criteria on which hospitals will be marked include availability of drinking water, electricity, 24–hour presence of doctors and nurses, newborn care and blood transfusion, privacy of patients during consultation, and drug availability on campus, among others. The number of family friendly hospitals in a district will also be a criterion for ranking the health facilities in a district.
A Quality Assurance Cell will be established at the directorate level for providing assistance as well as granting of certificates.
Initially, division level officers will be trained by experts from the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC), who in turn will train a team of four personnel in each district.
After the initial visit of the members of Quality Assurance Cell, the district team will analyse the requirements, prepare and implement the action plans for each hospital in the district within three months. Following this, members of the cell will again visit hospitals for the final marking process before providing certificates to the District Magistrate who will, thereafter, hand them over to the hospitals concerned.
Even as the certificates will be valid for three years, a team of the Quality Assurance Cell will conduct an inspection each year. If any major deficiency is detected, the hospitals will have to take corrective measures within a week, failing which their certificates will be cancelled. The proposal for FFH has been approved in the Project Implementation Plan (PIP) of NRHM for 2010–11 and the Department of Family Welfare is all set to issue a circular for FFH to all hospitals here within a week.
In its first phase, the training for certification will be done in 50 district women hospitals and 30 community health centres of the total 140 First Referral Units (FRU) of the state. As per the PIP, the certification will initially be voluntary, but after two years “it would be mandatory for all public hospitals to improve quality standards by way of FFH certification”. “Even with proper infrastructure, the public is not very keen to stay in government hospitals because of lack of cleanliness and poor services,” said Dr C B Prasad, Director General, Family Welfare, adding the certificate will encourage the hospital staff to maintain better standards.
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