The Hospital Conde de Sao Januário (CHCSJ) held a ceremony yesterday at its facilities in order to celebrate having passed the accreditation test by the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards (ACHS) in recognition of CHCSJ’s international standardized medical technologies and health care services.
Alexis Tam, the Secretary for Culture and Social Affairs, told visitors at the ceremony that CHCSJ was rated excellent in four (out of 47) criteria, specifically for patients’ participation, prevention of healthcare users’ falls, provision of public information, and for security management.
“We are indeed very proud of it,” said Tam.
CHCSJ is the first medical service provider in town to be accredited by the ACHS. In the neighboring region, Hong Kong, 26 healthcare institutions are accredited by the organization. In mainland China only one is.
“Since the new government of Macau came into the office, we did a lot to improve people’s livelihood and healthcare standards,” Tam claims. “The government’s first goal is [to] provide first class healthcare to the citizens of Macau.”
Last year, the ACHS conferred three excellent ratings to the CHCSJ. Tam pledges that, from now on, more review sessions on the hospital’s hardware and services will be arranged in order to keep ensuring that a good service is provided.
CHCSJ passed the test after a five-day assessment period. Desmond Yen, executive director of international business at ACHS, told the media that before the association came to CHCSJ to undertake the evaluation, ACHS informed the hospital that a test would be conducted imminently.
Yen believes that the time given to the hospital to prepare for the test was quite short, because not doing so could allow the hospital to present an abnormally perfect situation to the evaluators. That the CHCSJ still passed indicated that they had passed the test under normal conditions and thus met the ACHS’s requirements.
On the sidelines of the ceremony, Kuok Cheong U, director of CHCSJ, reaffirmed to the media that the ACHS sent medical professionals from Hong Kong, from the Middle East and from Australia to CHCSJ for four days in order to evaluate their practical work.
Kuok stated to the media that the accreditation is reviewed every four years. In order to obtain the next accreditation, three self-reviews have been planned to be conducted in the three years before the Australians’ next evaluation. One self-review was already conducted on October 24.
The three self-reviews are planned for October of 2018, 2019 and 2020, carrying a budget of MOP48,800, MOP290,280, and MOP48,800, respectively. “The Health Bureau and the CHCSJ are considering whether or not, after the review in 2019, we will participate in the next accreditation evaluation. Maybe it could be possible for ourselves to develop a medical improvement plan,” said Kuok.
The ACHS is an authorized accreditation agency with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. The ACHS is authorized to accredit healthcare organizations to the National Safety and Quality Health Services Standards (NSQHSS).
ACHS has been developing standards for health care organizations, and in partnership with government and other health care stakeholders, since its inception in 1974. The ACHS was the first organization in Australia to develop standards that applied across the entire health care sector. Its standards are recognized and implemented worldwide. Julie Zhu
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