Pretoria. The Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) unites with the healthcare community globally in observing World Patient Safety Day 2024 under the theme “improving diagnosis for patient safety” with the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!” highlighting the critical importance of correct and timely diagnosis in ensuring patient safety and improving health outcomes. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) established this global public campaign to raise global awareness about patient safety and call for solidarity and united action by all countries and international partners to reduce patient harm.
The OHSC is an independent regulatory body for health services established by the government to ensure quality and safety in healthcare by promoting and protecting the health and safety of users of health services. Patient safety is at the heart of the OHSC, and the entity perseveres in its endeavours and contributions to building a quality and safe healthcare system. As the regulator, the OHSC continues advocating for quality and safe healthcare for users by exercising its oversight role in health establishments – from major hospitals to clinics, the independent practices of doctors, and other health professionals to monitor compliance requirements with the prescribed norms and standards regulations. In this regard, the OHSC enhanced support to the public and private health sectors to improve the performance of health establishments against the norms and standards. With the entity operating in a highly regulated environment, the OHSC has undertaken a diagnostic assessment study to determine the state and performance of its monitoring and evaluation system – this will, in turn, strengthen our compliance inspection function. Furthermore, with the entity’s functioning essentially governed by the norms and standards prescribed by the Minister of Health, the entity continues to develop inspection tools for various health establishment categories.
To ensure compliance by health establishments, the OHSC continues its enforcement efforts, taking action against those persistently non-compliant with the regulated norms and standards after re-inspection. In this regard, the OHSC established an Enforcement Committee to oversee the OHSC’s compliance enforcement function and ensure that it is executed according to the organisation’s relevant legislation and prescripts. The OHSC continues to closely monitor risk indicators through the Early Warning System (EWS) to identify serious breaches of norms and standards. The information collected through EWS guides the authorities in addressing challenges that may result in serious harm to users. The EWS recommendations report outlines the trends in breaches of norms and standards related to patient safety and overall health system weaknesses and provides explicit recommendations to address these weaknesses. The OHSC persists in working closely with the Office of the Health Ombud (OHO), which is mandated to protect and promote the health and safety of healthcare users by considering, investigating, and disposing of complaints in the national health system. These complaints relate to non-compliance with prescribed norms and standards. The OHSC and OHO urge healthcare users and the public to report any poor quality of healthcare received from both public and private facilities to the Office of the Health Ombud through our Toll-Free Call Centre number at 080 911 6472 or email
complaints@ohsc.org.za.
Media Statement_OHSC Commemorates World Patient Safety Day 2024 (1)
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Issued by the Office of Health Standards Compliance.
For Media Enquiries Contact:
Ricardo Mahlakanya – Director: Communication and Stakeholder Relations
066 473 8666 / rmahlakanya@ohsc.org.za
