Gisborne Hospital Report - Health and Disability Commissioner

Gisborne Hospital 1999 – 2000
Quality Assurance Systems
rating. The accreditation process involves raising standards and setting high
ones against which to measure current performance and to assist in the
achievement of best practice. The findings of the survey are in line with those
of my investigation team. It is important that independent collaboration be
cited wherever possible. As a result of the events that led to my investigation,
public interest in quality of care at Gisborne Hospital has been high. In this
instance, in my opinion the public interest in disclosure outweighs THL’s
interest in the preservation of confidentiality.
4.6 Areas where standards did not achieve a rating of Substantial Achievement in
the accreditation survey by Quality Health New Zealand included: assessment
and planning of care, human resource management, safe environment,
infection control, central sterilising services, ward 4 paediatrics, operating
suite/day procedure service, special care units (ICU and neonatal), inpatient
mental health service, nursing clinical practice, medical clinical practice and
continuous quality improvement.
4.7 The recommendations for medical and nursing clinical practice included
involvement in, and documentation of, quality activities and the monitoring of
practice to ensure it meets contemporary standards.
4.8 Feedback from the survey team relating to quality included the following
observations:
• an absence of an overall structured approach, which is understood and
consistently implemented across the organisation
• many quality activities occurring throughout the organisation are
essentially a list of activities
• important to ensure Senior Management Group have a clear
commitment to quality activities and develop a systematic programme
for integrating continuous quality improvement across the organisation
• no evidence of a systematic approach to quality improvement that
ensures all services and staff have responsibility for quality activities
• levels of staff awareness of continuous quality improvement processes
variable across services
• few services have a system to capture their quality activity at a unit
level and be able to demonstrate the quality cycle of assessing,
planning, evaluation and feedback of results
• quality activities tend to be a whole range of separate items rather than
a systematic, organisation-wide service-linked programme, making it
difficult for managers and staff to evaluate the effectiveness of the
quality system/quality plan
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