CARDINAL Santos Medical Center has vowed to further strengthen its service to patients, after being named among the top 10 hospitals by the Department of Health (DOH).
The hospital was awarded in the level-3 top 10 hospitals category by the DOH during the Philippine Hospital Association’s annual conference on Wednesday night at the Manila Hotel.
Cardinal Santos Medical Center President and CEO Atty. Pilar Nenuca P. Almira told the BusinessMirror that the award, aside from confirming that the hospital is on track with its services and best practices, is also a call to enhance and strengthen their services and care to their patients.
“The award affirms that we are doing the right thing. The DOH has a very stringent criteria that they are looking for in a hospital, and when they told us that they didn’t see any issues and that we have met the standards and even did a lot more than what they expected to see, we felt very happy,” Almira said.
The DOH 30 Hospital Star Awards is in celebration of the 120th anniversary of the DOH, with the award recognizing hospitals that uphold high standards of quality in the provision of health services.
Hospitals must meet the DOH’s criteria: safety of patients and employees and infection control, highlighting programs to keep the environment free from harm; service provision, which pertains to innovations implemented that impact on patient’s care and outcome; customer and employee satisfaction, being plans and projects that promote increases in the level of satisfaction of employees and customers; community-based projects and activities, being innovation to promote health in the community; quality improvement, with the provision of plans, studies, and projects to continually improve systems, patient safety, and clinical outcomes.
She said the hospital will embark on key changes come 2019 to further level up their provision of services and safety of their patients, as well as reach a wider market for their health-care services.
The hospital will increase the number of patient rooms from 300 at the moment.
“We are improving all our healthcare services in the hospital. We are adding more rooms, building another 30 rooms,” she added.
“We are going to have a new sports clinic to cater to people who go on sports that get injured. This is getting more responsive now since the country is getting more sports-oriented,” she said.
Cardinal Santos Medical Center is also inclined to partner with two more primary health clinics by 2019 to be able to offer its services to more Filipinos.
“One is, we will expand our reach, so we will have more partnerships outside of the site. We are now partnering with primary health clinics for Cardinal Santos to be the referral center of this clinic, which is run by a foreign company. We are also looking at opening two more in 2019 outside of Cardinal Santos,” she added.
According to its web site, the hospital has 32 health-care partners to date.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes