PESHAWAR: Peshawar Institute of Cardiology, one of the 11 medical teaching intuitions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, continues to achieve milestones in the area of patient care.
Launched in December last year, PIC has the services of 23 specialists including cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and others. The institute has generated the highest revenue through Social Health Protection Initiative (SHPI). The public sector hospitals earned 27 per cent of the total amount generated through SHPI compared to 73 per cent the private hospitals.
PIC generated Rs609 million, the highest amount generated through SHPI by any hospital, both public and private sector, in the province. The provincial government is persuading other state-owned hospitals to follow the PIC’s strategy to serve more patients and generated money through the programme.
The latest achievement of PIC in the area of patient care is its International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) certification.
The institute becomes the first public sector health facility in the country to get ISO certification
“There is no looking back, as PIC has been recommended for ISO certification of all its 19 departments, clinical and administrative, because of the quality of care we provide to patients,” Prof Shahkar Ahmad Shah, the medical director of the institute, told Dawn.
He said that PIC was the first public sector facility in the country to achieve the milestone that would enable it to establish links with global health entities for training of staff and upgradation of services for ultimately benefit of the people of the province.
Prof Shahkar, a cardio-thoracic surgeon by profession, said that the recommendation by the local auditors of the Geneva-based ISO was made last Friday and certificate would be issued to PIC within 10 working days.
He said that ISO was the world largest standardisation company for industries and institutions including healthcare. It has issued ISO certificates to private sector hospitals in the country including Aga University Hospital, Shifa Hospital and Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre.
Prof Shahkar said that PIC became the only public sector facility nationwide to get the honour. “The PIC management has put in place stringent quality control measures in delivery of patient care and maintenance of hospital facilities and equipment. In order to authenticate its quality processes, the management and Board of Governors have asked for an independent third party audit from ISO,” he added.
He said that after a tough two-stage audit by subject specialists from ISO, the quality process at PIC was validated as the policies, documentation and patient delivery system were found to be of international standards and the hospital got recommendation for ISO 9001-2015 certification by the auditors.
“During the last one year, we have performed more than 1,200 heart surgeries, all free of cost. ISO certification confirms the high quality of care in a hospital due to its organisational and standard of care processes,” said Prof Shahkar.
He said that the next step would be to get the Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation in March 2023 to become the only public sector hospital in the country to be JCI-accredited. He said that the credit of the achievements of PIC went to its staff as well as government for its support.
“Not only, we provide quality care at PIC but we are in process to extend the facilities to other districts in near future due to the increasing number of heart ailments in the province,” he said.
Prof Shahkar said that Afghan nationals were also among the recipients of free treatment at PIC.
He added that so far about 40 Afghan patients were operated upon free of cost.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2022
