Experts from one of the best children's hospitals in the world offered recommendations for improving governance and enhancing patient care in OKHMATDYT

Following the one-week on-site assessment of the current state of care and services in the National Children’s Specialized Hospital ‘OKHMATDYT’, the inter-professional team of highly qualified experts from SickKids (Toronto, Canada) presented preliminary recommendations for leveraging current strengths, optimizing operational processes and building skills and capacity in OKHMATDYT.

During the July 2018 visit, the SickKids delegation worked closely with the administration of OKHMATDYT, and met with the ten largest charitable organizations and foundations that have been supporting the hospital for many years.

The Canadian experts have recognized the distinguished work of OKHMATDYT doctors, who are passionate and highly motivated to learn, to interact and to improve in order to enhance patient care and to advance medicine in Ukraine.

The SickKids representatives have provided a number of preliminary recommendations for developing a financing strategy, enhancing operational capabilities and improving the quality of internal processes. In particular, the team of experts has identified the following areas of focus:

• establishing an office of Patient & Family Experience to facilitate introduction of key roles and to help people feel as comfortable in the hospital as possible. For instance, in addition to explaining children and their parents what to expect during treatment, the Canadian colleagues also create game rooms, invite therapeutic clowns and child life specialists, etc. 
• accelerating Information Technology implementation to enhance electronic data collection, to improve quality, safety and general operations.
• improving multi-disciplinary cooperation among specialists, which will contribute to ensuring timely diagnosis and treatment.
• implementing a centralized quality management structure to oversee safety, timeliness, efficiency and effectiveness of organizational performance, as well as defining lines of accountability and reporting for both medical and administrative teams. This will allow optimizing the internal processes in the hospital and ensuring that health professionals have more time for patients.
• identifying a pilot program within the hospital (i.e. Neurosurgery) to collaborate with risk assessment and infection control to help reduce the incidence of surgical site infections.

The cooperation between the two children’s hospitals will continue. SickKids and OKHMATDYT will sign a memorandum of cooperation in the near future. This is a great opportunity for OKMATDYT to apply the international best practices for hospital administration and optimization of internal processes.