Following the recently held World Health Assembly, non-government healthcare organisations, International Hospital Federation (IHF) and the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) have come together in preparing a recommendation plan to support future pandemic response.
Peter Lachman, CEO of ISQua said, “As many countries face the COVID-19 crisis with considerable uncertainty on how the virus will continue its deadly journey in the population, the headlines are now on preparing ourselves ready for the next normal situation. While it is important to recognize the work done individually and institutionally by health workers and health services to save as many as possible lives, it is also now time to put in place what will prevent a crisis of this magnitude in the future.”
IHF and ISQua highlight three important factors to be addressed:
- A safety culture protecting both patients and health workers. The lack of protective equipment has caused a global crisis and exposed a lot of patients and healthcare workers to the disease. Healthcare service providers with embedded safety culture programs have had an effective response that made a difference.
- The importance of multidisciplinary teamwork for patient-centered care. With most COVID-19 response adapting a multidisciplinary approach due to shortage of staff, the importance of having an integrated holistic patient-centered care program was highlighted. Both organizations call for a systematic education program in which health providers will have interdisciplinary training.
- Adoption of innovation and agility to have an effective response even in critical situations COVID-19 has featured the capacity of innovation, technology and responsiveness of health providers under extreme conditions such as lack of resources and absence of treatment.
“In addition, the IHF is working closely with a team of experts in healthcare management from all over the world to form a Beyond COVID-19 Task Force. The aim of this task force is to come up with a solid recommendation plan based on the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent a health crisis of this scale in the future.” Eric de Roodenbeke, CEO of IHF said.
ISQua has created a resource page for COVID-19. . Here you will find links to webinars, articles, research papers, recordings, podcasts, and other research portals. These resources are updated regularly.