KIGALI - The Minister of Health, Dr. Richard Sezibera, has called upon health professionals to improve service delivery to clients at their respective health facilities. Sezibera made the call, yesterday, during a meeting that brought together over 500 health practitioners from all district hospitals and health centres across the country. “Patients seeking our services must leave with the satisfaction they deserve,” he said. Sezibera noted that the ministry had produced a health profession code of conduct, to guide the work of practitioners. Sezibera urged the health professionals to embrace the document and to pin it up at all health facilities to enable those seeking medical served know what they are entitled to. “What we need is quality health services, good customer care in referral hospitals, district hospitals and health centres in the country,” the Minister said. The meeting was aimed at discussing how to improve quality services in health and how the patient’s charter can be fully respected. Following the recent international accreditation of King Faysal Hospital, the Minister said he wants to introduce accreditation process of all health facilities beginning with other referral hospitals and will later be decentralized to district hospitals and health centres. “We have come up with a set of criteria that will be used to accredit district hospitals that have attained certain benchmarks under our quality demands. This process of accreditation will trickle down to health centres,” the minister noted, adding that all hospitals and health centres should have strategic business plans that provide a roadmap for the future of the facilities. The business plans must set the course of becoming more self-sustaining in terms of resources and ability to deliver high quality services. “We need to have a coordinated approach to work to ensure that service delivery is not affected,” Sezibera said. He also challenged the practitioners to fully understand the new policy on community-based insurance programme, Mutuelle de Sante , scheduled to go into effect in July. Ends
