The Radiodiagnosis service of the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella has obtained the optimum level certification granted by the Andalusian Health Quality Agency (ACSA), an evaluation and certification entity belonging to the Ministry of Health and Families and integrated into the Progreso y Salud Foundation, whose standards are recognized by national and international accreditation bodies such as the ENAC or the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (Isqua).
With this distinction, this service is the one that has a greater number of compliance with standards of its specialty in Andalusia. In addition, only two other units of this specialty have this optimal level certification at the Andalusian level, they have specified from the Andalusian Government.
This distinction is added to those already obtained by the Hospital Costa del Sol and its dependent centres, which continues to be the institution with the largest number of ‘Optimal’ level certified services in Andalusia.
Specifically, this is the third quality certification with the ACSA of this Clinical Management Unit since its first process ended in December 2011 and the second in April 2017, both in advanced level.
With this distinction, they added in a statement, the certified entities “demonstrate their commitment to excellence and continuous service improvement that they offer to citizens, guaranteeing that their activity conforms to the quality standards defined in the ACSA certification manuals”.
These quality criteria evaluate aspects related to the organization of the activity, the accessibility and continuity of care, user rights or process security. Through the self-assessment that the units carry out on the ACSA standards and that are ratified in an evaluation visit, the certification process constitutes, in addition to recognition, an opportunity for learning and growth, which allows identifying and developing actions of gets better.
The manual of standards for the certification of Clinical Management Units contemplates 125 standards -including those in the annex for diagnostic imaging units- of which the Radiodiagnosis Unit of the Costa del Sol Hospital has reached 102, that is, 86%.
In this way, the ACSA has recognized the commitment to the quality of the professionals of this service “which has obtained excellent results in areas such as management of integrated care plans and processes, clinical information, accessibility and continuity of care and the person as an active subject”.
According to the ACSA, “the The team of professionals that make up the unit is a cohesive team, enthusiastic and involved in the results and with a great interest in working on the continuous improvement of the quality of care”.
Throughout the process, the evaluation team has been able to verify among its strengths the continuous improvement of this service since the “unit understands quality not as a specific recognition, but as one more technology to use in their daily work, being a day-to-day management tool that allows them to analyze the results of their work and establish improvements, which lead to carried out and evaluated”, highlights the ACSA in its report.
Citizen participation
On the other hand, they have also highlighted that this area cares about knowing the opinions of users and does so through various channels, such as the Citizen Participation Commission, suggestion box and satisfaction surveys. Thanks to this measure and sources of information, improvements have been incorporated, such as the one related to the assignment of appointments that have been designed for mornings, afternoons and, if necessary, weekends, all adapted to the characteristics of the patients: schedules according to special requirements (for example, diabetics), management of appointments in a single act, etc.