Dr. B. Krishnamurthy, Director, Quality Management Services, PES Institute of Medical Sciences Research, Kuppam, Andra Pradesh

Sankara Nethralaya Academy’s Certificate program on Health care quality management, both offline and online that included a session on a critical topic “Medical Governance”, got off to a vibrant start at the Sankara Nethralaya main campus on 05.09.2015  by  Dr. B. Krishnamurthy, Director, Quality Management Services, PES Institute of Medical Sciences Research, Kuppam, AP

Sri A Mahalingam, Assistant Registrar, TSNA welcomed the gathering and extended his extensive support to online streaming of the session. Welcoming the Chief Guest Shrimathi Shyamala Selvaraj, DGM-Quality Management, introduced Dr. Krishnamurthy as an Anaesthesiologist and adult Intensivist trained in India and UK with over 30 years of clinical experience in provision of acute care in Anesthesia and Adult Critical Care.  She added that, he has devoted himself to helping various hospitals set up Quality and Safety Management programmes and achieve certification and accreditation in the last five years, been a principal assessor and Trainer, NABH and an Honorary Advisor to AHPI.

Dr Krishnamurthy in his lecture pointed that Medical Governance formed an integral part of Leadership and Governance that referred to both Corporate and Clinical Governance, objectives and duties of Health care organisations to efficiently manage the finances of the organisation and achieve optimal level of patient safety.

Extensively covering on Clinical Governance, he observed that the spectrum included Clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, R&D, Openness, Risk management, Education and training, that cyclic process which standardised, constantly and qualitatively improving clinical care by identifying problems, risks, safety standards, update of technical knowhow through training methodologies that resulted in Continuing Professional Development.

Quoting Stephen R. Covey an expert on effective and efficient management, Dr Krishnamurthy pointed that effective leadership included multiple management systems such as Information Security Management systems, Emergency and Food safety management systems. He explained the vital role of communication skills in Health care setting, to imply diagnostic accuracy, patient safety and compliance.

Explaining the nuances of Clinical Audit from definition of clinical audit as a systematic review of care against explicit criteria and implementation of change, he observed that in any Health care organisation, several aspects Internal, External, Financial auditing, Sentinel Event monitoring, Quality and Safety Indicator monitoring, Medical record review, safety survey all formed the crux of Audit assessments and surveys.

Dr Krishnamurthy elaborated that Clinical Audit process should include identifying issues, setting criteria and standards, data collection, comparison of performance vs criteria and standards and implementation of changes.

The high power session ended with a vote of thanks after a brief Q & A session.