Healthcare professionals from public healthcare authorities and private healthcare providers will be attending the Quality Management Healthcare Conference which runs alongside Arab Health 2011, to re-examine quality management in an effort to improve delivery standards, patient safety and to reduce costs.
"There are significant gaps in knowledge throughout the Middle East in quality management practices. We want to raise the importance of quality management, using real-life data based on research, to improve quality in healthcare," said Dr. Samer H. Ellahham, who is chairing the conference and is the Chief Quality Officer and Senior Consultant at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Abu Dhabi.
The financial need for quality management in regional healthcare is clear. According to consultants McKinsey & Company, over the next 20 years, treatment demand will rise in the GCC by 240%. Similarly, over the same period, the total number of hospital beds will need to more than double to 162,000 to meet demand, driving GCC healthcare budgets up to $60 billion by 2025 – a fivefold increase from today.
QUEST a high performing US hospitals project was developed to uplift operational and financial performance through improvement in quality management.
"The initial challenge was to measure their respective performances against each other. So facilities were benchmarked to determine an entry level of performance in cost, mortality and healthcare delivery." said Simon Page Divisional Director for Life Sciences Middle East and Asia at IIR Middle East, the organisers of the Arab Health Exhibition and Congress which takes place at the Dubai World Trade Centre on 24-27 January 2011.
"In the first year QUEST hospitals cut expenses on average by over $340 per patient, reduced observed mortality rates by 14% and increased evidence-based care delivery standards by almost 9%. Indeed in total it was estimated that the 157 participating facilities saved $577 million and if that performance was echoed throughout the US the savings could have been close to $20 billion," added Page.
However many healthcare providers find it difficult to address quality management effectively and issues such as hospital-acquired infections, adverse surgery and drug events, patient falls and communication and coordination failures including hospital discharges continue unabated.
According to Dr. Rick van Pelt, Director of Global Programs, at Boston-based Partners Harvard Medical International in the US, who will be speaking about commitment to quality improvement and making quality the competitive edge, agrees that quality is an important and complex issue that is generally poorly understood.
"At its core, leadership, physicians, nurses and administrators all play an important role in managing the quality of care. It takes a dedicated systems-based approach and process to make sustainable improvements in quality," said Dr. van Pelt.
The quality management conference will also provide a step-by-step guide to understanding the quality management healthcare process.
"Expert quality management healthcare professionals speaking at the conference will guide delegates from the basics to the role of a quality department, data monitoring, implementing quality, measuring performance and clinical governance through to accreditation," said conference manager Zuzana Laukova.
Overall the Arab Health Exhibition and Congress will feature more than 2,700 exhibiting companies from 70 countries and is expected to attract around 65,000 participants.
