The El Cruce – Néstor Kirchner Hospital in Florencio Varela has obtained the ISO certificate 9001:2008, which guarantees that the service of initial care to critical patients redirected from the hospital network meets the requirements of Administration System Standards.
The certificate was awarded by the Dutch insurer Det Norske, one of the three leading bodies in the sector, and lasts for three years.
The recognition comes after four years’ intense work to meet an objective: to create a model public hospital. In fact, the El Cruce Hospital has been named the fifth most important High Complexity Network Hospital in Latin America. In addition, in the middle of 2013, it was named by Carissa Etienne, the head of the Pan-American Health organization (WHO), as an Argentine example of development for other regions.
Ricardo Otero, the head of the Quality Department at the hospital, said: “Achieving ISO 9001:2008 certification is the result of a group effort over four years by all the staff at HEC, at every level. They understood the need to do quality work and committed to it.”
Otero also explained to E-Health Reporter Latin America that to maintain the certification it is necessary to continue the commitment to quality care. He went into detail about the period it took to achieve the certificate: “The process developed to reach this complex and increasingly demanding stage was basically focused on more training, implementing improvements and, finally, evaluation, internal at first and then external, whose final result was certification. During that period, practically half the staff got involved, including professionals and non-professionals in the care, administrative and technical areas.»»
At the El Cruce Hospital the staff is aware that it is crucial to make progress in other areas to ensure excellence and efficacy in care for users and patients. Otero said: “The processes submitted to external evaluation will be increased and more departments will progressively get more involved. We expect that by the end of the year we will receive certification for four or five more processes. In this regard, the cooperation of the entire hierarchical team was – and will be – fundamental, providing the drive and support to meet expectations.”
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