Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC) today announced plans to launch a national patient safety pledge in partnership with the US-based Patient Safety Movement Foundation (PSMF) to enable healthcare organizations and professionals in the UAE to commit to a culture of safety.

The Foundation is working towards its mission to reduce the number of preventable deaths in hospitals globally to zero by 2020. With less than two years to achieve the global target, DHCC is playing an active role to influence patient safety in the UAE.

Figures from the World Health Organization indicate the burden and impact of unsafe healthcare. In magnitude, 1 in 10 patients around the world are harmed while receiving care. In incidence, the number is approximately 43 million each year, and medication errors alone cost an estimated 42 billion USD annually.

On the sidelines of Arab Health, which concludes on Thursday, January 31, DHCC signed a cooperation agreement with PSMF to jointly launch by early 2019 the national patient safety pledge that aims to prevent harm to patients during treatment and care. The pledge will be supported by the non-profit organization Emirates Medical Association (EMA) that has since 1981 helped improve the quality of healthcare in the UAE.

The agreement was inked by Dr. Ramadan AlBlooshi, CEO of Dubai Healthcare City Authority – Regulatory (DHCR), the regulator of the DHCC free zone and Dr. David Mayer, CEO of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation in the presence of senior officials from both parties.

The mechanism of the national patient safety pledge will be to:

Commit: Once you take the pledge, you will be listed with the global Patient Safety Movement Foundation.
Act: Identify patient safety challenges in your clinical environment and develop solutions by adopting the Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS) developed by the Foundation. The APSS are free, evidence-based solutions developed to address the 31 leading challenges to patient safety which have been proven to prevent hospital errors and increase patient safety. More than 4,500 hospitals from 44 countries have already implemented the APSS, saving over 81,533 lives in 2017 alone. 
Share: Present regionally-relevant best practice models at the Dubai Healthcare City Best Practice Conference 2019 in partnership with PSFM.

Speaking about the role that DHCC will play, Dr. AlBlooshi, CEO of DHCR said, “Our partnership with PSFM will see us collaborate with healthcare professionals and organizations within DHCC and beyond. In 2017, we were the first in the Middle East to make a public commitment through PSMF to improve a culture of safety. Last year, we honored this commitment through our inaugural Best Practice Conference in partnership with PSMF which presented 12 best practices from UAE healthcare organizations across leading patient safety challenges facing hospitals.”

Dr. Mayer said, “We are excited to have the independent regulatory arm of the Dubai Healthcare City Authority make a public commitment to share our mission with its members and invite every hospital in Dubai to implement all of our Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS). Our goal is to achieve zero preventable patient deaths in hospitals by the year 2020.  With just one year left, we need every hospital to implement every APSS. I hope this commitment encourages other countries to step forward.”

Caption: On the sidelines of Arab Health, Dr. Ramadan AlBlooshi, CEO of Dubai Healthcare City Authority – Regulatory and Dr. David Mayer, CEO of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation sign an agreement to jointly launch a national patient safety pledge in the UAE to help achieve the global target of zero preventable deaths in hospitals by 2020.