Improving care: ‘It will lead to more trust in our hospitals’

Public complaints management system to be introduced in hospitals.

LAHORE:

A public complaints management system (PCMS) will be introduced at public teaching hospitals to provide better health care facilities to patients, said Secretary Health Arif Nadeem on Monday.

Nadeem was presiding over a meeting of teaching hospitals’ principals and medical superintendents to devise a strategy on how to launch the PCMS. The meeting was called on the instruction of caretaker Chief Minister Najam Sethi.

He said the system would improve the performance of teaching hospitals as well as provide better treatment facilities to the patients.

“Various aspects of the PCMS were considered in the meeting. The health secretary asked to identify the hospital departments regarding which feedback would be sought from patients and attendants. He also directed that a standardised questionnaire be prepared for this purpose,” said a spokesperson of Health Department.

“The questionnaire will be prepared in light of the recommendations of senior professors, medical superintendents and principals,” he added.



The spokesman said that in the meeting it had been decided that Prof Dr Faisal Masood, the King Edward Medical University vice chancellor and other senior professors would submit their proposals to the health secretary in light of which a standardised questionnaire would be devised. Experts from the Punjab Information Technology Board would extend technical assistance for evolving the system of addressing public complaints, the spokesman said.

“Secretary Nadeem said that the public complaints management system would improve the efficiency of government hospitals, the quality of service, would act as a check on misappropriation of medicines and keeping medical equipment and machines operational due to which the confidence of people would increase in government hospitals,” he added.

Prof Faisal Masood, Prof Zameer Ahmad of Allama Iqbal Medical College, Jinnah Hospital Medical Superintendent Fazalur Rehman, Prof Muhammad Umar, Dr Rashid Maqbool of the Allied Hospital Faisalabad, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Medical Superintendent Ijaz Ahmad Sheikh, Mayo Hospital Medical Superintendent Zahid Pervaiz, Punjab Information Technology Board Director General Waqar Qureshi, Punjab Health Sector Reforms Programme Director Farasat Iqbal and other officers attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2013.