The focus of Fortis remains on quality healthcare, technology, clinical talent, skill development, and constant clinical engagement. An outlook
Fortis Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare delivery providers in India started its operation with their flagship hospital in Punjab, Mohali in the year 2002. Today, it spans across geographical boundaries and is present in five countries. The group entered West Bengal in 2009 and took over the green field project of Wockhardt at Anandapur.
Fortis Hospital, Anandapur, Kolkata, is a multi-speciality tertiary care hospital. We commenced operations in January 2011 and since then have been a familiar, trusted and comforting presence, ministering to the healthcare needs not only of the immediate community but also of patients from Eastern India and neighbouring countries. Our hospital is focused on cardiac care, digestive care, respiratory care, brain and spine care, bone and joint care, kidney care and urology care. Complex procedures like knee and hip replacement, spinal fixations, head surgery, renal transplants, laparoscopic surgery, cardiac surgery, stenting, neuro interventions are routinely being done here. Our focus remains on quality healthcare, state-of-the-art technology, clinical talent, skill development, and constant clinical engagement. We have full time consultants because we realise that most of the doctors in the city are engaged in different hospitals and have their clinics at different locations while they end up wasting lot of times travelling different facilities. Here they are available to provide specialised care to the patients.
In this short time span of three years, we have earned many accolades. We received the Golden Trophy award for Energy Conservation year 2013 (in hospital category) from President of India, Pranab Mukherjee in the gracious presence of the then Minister of Power for state, Jyotiraditya Scindia.
Fortis Hospital, Anandapur was ranked as the second best multi-speciality hospital by The Week Nielsen Survey in 2013, which pegged us at a position much higher than almost all other reputed hospitals in this part of the country. In addition to that, our pursuit for excellence has also helped in earning recognition at many prestigious forums and conferences. We received the third prize at the 13th CII National Supervisory Skills Competition in 2013 for our project ‘Evidence based approach to care and control of infusion related phlebitis’.
Quality initiatives
Medical operating system and clinical excellence score card
Medical Operating System (MOS) was conceptualised under the MedEx Transformers projects in 2011. MOS focuses on process improvement and standardisation for improving patient outcomes; MOS focuses on ‘Process’ while Clinical Excellence Score Card (CESC) tracks ‘Outcomes’.
Internal audits are done on MOS protocols every month and findings are shared with corporate quality group, along with outcome scores which are bench marked against internal standards.
Quality Improvement Projects (QIPs)
At least one quality improvement project is undertaken every year to bring in a focused approach for improving quality in specific areas like pain management, hand hygiene, safety of medications etc.
Clinical outcomes are measured on regular basis, especially in the field of CABG, TKR and PTCA. Trend analysis is done on audited parameters and accordingly initiatives are taken to improve the quality of care and to provide better service. Besides there are several initiatives taken for critical care patients like measuring Apache Score and Logistic Uroscore 2 for the post CABG patients. Hazards identification and risk assessment are few other quality initiatives taken in the organisation.
At Fortis, patient safety is given utmost importance. Hence, we have introduced Safety First Board, White Board (containing patient information), strict medication error audit, prescription audits, high-risk medication audit, Display of LASA drug (look alike sound alike drugs), narcotic audits, code blue system with CPR analysis in all the patient-care areas. We have also introduced safe surgical check list to ensure high level safety for the patients undergoing operational procedures. To avoid infections and cross infections to the patients various measures like hand hygiene audits and training, environmental audits and checking of the high-risk areas are done on regular basis.
Fortis Operating System: Audit of service parameters
To improve service efficiency and effectiveness, Fortis Operating System (FOS) is implemented in the hospital. Under this project, departments are selected across the hospital. Every procedure in the department is defined with a process flow. The areas of concern pertaining to service delivery are identified and discussed.
Antimicrobial Stewardship
Under our Infection Control programme, special emphasis has been given on Anti-Microbial Stewardship (AMS). AMS guidelines and surgical prophylaxis guidelines have been developed for 11 super speciality hospitals (the A-11 hospitals) in Fortis network across the country. Fortis Anandapur has meticulously implemented these guidelines.
- < The hospital has been successful in banning 26 non-evidence based irrational antibiotics combinations from its IP/OP pharmacy.
- < The hospital has also launched the Drug Resistance Index (DRI) programme – a first of its kind in Eastern India.
- < Introduction of mobile application (for android, windows and Iphone)
MSD Pharmaceuticals is supporting the AMS programme at a pan-Fortis level. As a novel endeavour, the local microbial epidemiology and the antibiotic prescribing guidelines for our hospital are available as ‘Mobile App’ on the mobile handsets of the consultants, just at the tap of a finger. The present guidelines are valid from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015. Fortis Hospital, Anandapur is the first hospital to introduce the mobile application among the Fortis Group.
Quality, academics and research
As we all know, ‘Quality is a journey and not a destination,’ we would continue to work on different parameters of quality to ensure that best care is provided to all the patients.
Working in this direction, we got the NABH accreditation in April 2013 within a record time of nine months. Thereafter, we also got the prestigious NABL accreditation in accordance with the standard ISO 15189:2007 in February, 2014 for our laboratory services.
Last year, we have introduced certificate course in critical care IDCCM (Indian diploma of critical care medicine) affiliated by Indian Society Of Critical Care medicine and MEM (Masters in Emergency medicine) programme on Emergency Medicine affiliated by Society of Emergency Medicine of India (SEMI).
This year, we got accreditation from National Board of Examination to run post graduate degree medical programmes in respiratory medicines and super speciality post graduation programmes for genitourinary surgery.
Identifying the growing need of trained paramedics for dialysis and their dearth in this part of the country, we started dialysis technician certificate programme, a nine-month curriculum providing knowledge and their application for kidney diseases and dialysis, understanding of pharmacology and pharmacotherapeutic aspect related to kidney dialysis and understanding of dialysis machines, water treatment and allied issues. This programme has been started in association with the Jadavpur University.
On the research front, we have ten projects ongoing in specialties of respiratory medicine, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopaedics, rheumatology, neuropsychology and microbiology.
Skill development
Specialty nursing is a concept where a particular nurse gets trained in particular speciality. So when a patient gets treated for orthopaedic, the ortho nurse who trained for pain management and trained for handling that particular case, will be attending the patient. This is something which is new in the city on which we are working on.
- < Critical care nursing (CCNP): Nurses with critical care specialisation delivers competent nursing services to critically ill patients. A one year in-house specialisation course was launched in July 2013.
This course has become very popular with the nursing team. We have the third batch of CCNP running currently.
- < Besides, we also have specialisation courses running for oncology and OT nursing in urology and general surgery in their first and second batch respectively.