Professionals meet in Antequera to learn about the new manual for health management units

More than 50 quality references from Andalusian Public Health System centers have gathered at the Antequera Hospital (Málaga) to learn first-hand about the new manual of standards for the certification of health management units, recently published by the Agency Health Quality of Andalusia (ACSA), entity of the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs responsible for promoting quality in the health system.

The presentation day for this manual was opened by the managing director of the North Malaga Health Management Area, Belén Jiménez Martínez, and by the director of the ACSA, José Ignacio del Río Maza de Lizana.

The appointment was also attended by the head of certification of centers and units of the agency, Ángela Palop del Río, and the coordinator of standards manuals, Maria del Mar Castellano Zurera.

The attendees, professional experts in quality from the different centers of the health system, have been able to learn about the main novelties of the manual, analyze and reflect on the evolution of the unit certification program, as well as share visions and expectations with the ACSA team.

Thus, it has been possible to draw up a balance of the last years of this certification program and share reflections on the areas for improvement identified in the more than 500 unit evaluation processes carried out in the last five years.

During his final speech, the director of the ACSA highlighted "the fundamental role of the quality benchmarks of the health system centers as agents of change and as key figures for the implementation of the culture of quality and the transformation of the health system to new heights of effectiveness and efficiency".

In this way, the new manual for health management units offers a specific reference pattern to promote the culture of quality in units that provide health care within large healthcare organizations, such as hospital complexes, regional hospitals, health management or primary care districts.

In this sense, the manual is aimed at services that constitute the core of health care in the Andalusian system and that, since the beginning of this program in 2002, "have made certification a sign of identity", being today more than 300 units that have the ACSA quality seal.

The main novelty of this document is the structure of the certification model, the result of a review process "that has opted for its rationalization and simplification, to make it more accessible and improve its internal coherence, reducing the number of standards from the 101 of the version prior to 76 of the current one", they added.

The standards are grouped into three blocks and six criteria, which focus on such crucial aspects of the provision of health services as unit management, patient-centered care and safety culture.

More than 30 professionals with management and coordination responsibilities in units, centers, universities and health institutions, both in Andalusia and Portugal, a country that has adopted the ACSA center certification as an official model, have participated in the preparation of the manual.

The standards "are the basis of the certification processes that this entity carries out in the Andalusian health system", but also "an important source of knowledge on quality management in the health field". Thus, the manual can be consulted and downloaded free of charge by any professional or user interested in this subject from the agency's website.