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Mafraq Hospital

2011 SAWIB WinnerCompany: Mafraq Hospital
Company Description: Mafraq Hospital, began operations in Abu Dhabi in 1983; at that time the largest tertiary referral hospital (451 beds) in the UAE. Mafraq Hospital is owned and operated by the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), which is responsible for all curative activities of public hospitals and clinics in Abu Dhabi. In December 2007, SEHA contracted with Bumrungrad International to manage the hosp.
Nomination Category: Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Executive - Non-Profit or Government - Up to 2,500 Employees

Nomination Title: Helge Springhorn, Director of Quality Department.

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive during the eligibility period (up to 500 words):

The management of Mafraq Hospital decided in October 2010 to appoint Helge as the Director of Quality and Risk Management Department. This step was taken in order to drive the organization toward world class healthcare as per the government vision. Helge was chosen based on her experience and success in previous challenging role as Director of Nursing. She started by restructuring the quality department from one that did very basic quality related work, with a manpower pool of only 5, into 1 that has 5 fully functioning sections, namely: Customer Care, Risk & Incident Management, Regulatory Compliance & Accreditation, Quality Improvement and Infection Prevention & Control Sections; with a total of 31 staff.

This achievement considered as a big success at Mafraq as the government changed the funding policy of public hospitals and started to cut positions and reduce expenses in order to prepare the hospitals to be self-funded and depend on insurance reimbursement. However, the experience of Helge allowed her to secure additional positions and budget and get it approved from the higher authorities.

Helge focused on building "quality culture" in the organization and supported the adoption of EFQM model as framework for organization excellence. She supervised the self assessment against the model to identify the strengths and weakness of the organization. This resulted in series of activities to upgrade the quality level overall the hospital. She introduced "Quality and Excellence Culture" as mandatory session in the annual employee mandatory orientation program. This session aims to promote the values of healthcare professionals and personal excellence. Her approach changed the mindset of employees from doing a task to pass a survey or audit, to do a task because it is a patient safety issue or simply the right thing to do.

The adoption of the EFQM model resulted in introducing new quality initiatives that cover staff from all departments such as suggestion scheme, appreciation scheme, and loyal employees' annual appreciation event. All these activities were introduced as part of building quality and excellence culture in the organization. Furthermore, it led to the participation in Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA) which is the local version of EFQM. As a result Mafraq won the Diamond Award (top award) in May 2011 and was the first public hospital in UAE to achieve this. All the efforts in building quality culture were submitted to "SEHA" (company that manage all public hospitals) as part of the transformational events required from all public hospitals in Abu Dhabi. "SEHA Platinum Award" (top award) was given to Mafraq Hospital in July 2011.

Furthermore, Helge introduced a hospital wide Risk Management program with partnership of Quality, Knowledge and Information Consultant, from the Royal College of Surgeons, as part of innovative study to integrate risk assessment with audit and incident management.

Currently she is supervising the preparation of Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation in October 2011.

Mafraq Hospital is proud of Helge's achievements and nominates her for the award to acknowledge her efforts and inspire all others to excel in their performance.

List the URLs (web addresses) of any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that you would like the judges to see that support your entry. IMPORTANT: List each URL on a separate line, begin each URL with http://, and enclose each URL in square brackets. For example, [http://www.yourcompany.com/pressrelease.html]:

http://www.mafraqhospital.ae/
http://www.mafraqhospital.ae/NewsItem.aspx?SectionID=8&RefID=173
http://www.mafraqhospital.ae/NewsItem.aspx?SectionID=8&RefID=168
http://www.ameinfo.com/273065.html
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20110816071407/SEHA_hospitals_awarded_for_transformational_projects_in_healthcare


 

Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 100 words):

Helge started her career since 1983 as a registered nurse and gained lot of clinical and administrative experience over the years. Her work experience was built on solid education as she studied at different stages of her life. She got several degrees in nursing and nursing education from top colleges at South Africa. She worked in different countries such as South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE in senior positions. She joined Mafraq Hospital in 2008 were she build the nursing education department then promoted to lead the quality department and upgrade the quality level overall the hospital.