Patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of health care and the reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care to an acceptable minimum.

Kunal Chatterjee, VP – Quality Assurance, Omega Healthcare Management Services Pvt. Ltd is a strategist & implementer with skills in creating & implementing workflow to facilitate structured support in all areas and issues.

Omega Healthcare Management Services Pvt. Ltd is the premier offshore provider of healthcare outsourcing services which specializes in medical billing, coding, accounts receivable management, and other healthcare-related services.

Patient safety has become the need of the hour

Kunal shares his opinion, “I fully agree with you, it's a very big concern in the global world. And it is imperative for all of us to be very conscious about it and not take it lightly because the world has changed and the environment has changed. And as we are human beings, not computers, it is very important for all of us to not be patient and be safe ourselves. So it is a paramount topic today for in the world as patient safety today, because this is very important and vulnerable today, in spite of us being all modernized today, but patient safety has become the need of the hour,” he says.

Health workers are helping us survive

Kunal sheds light on the topic, “My contribution to is when they said that the center patient health consciousness, as was there in our dictionary, and it was a part of an active part of our realization that how do we stay safe, but post-March 2020, the concept of patient safety, the concept of health worker has taken big limelight because they were never recognized or they never thought through it earlier. Now today they are recognized and my contribution to the health workers is primarily in terms of, if you are telling personal, supporting them to survive. So they are more important than the army who are posted on the borders for us. Because if we don't survive, there is no country and they are helping us to make us survive, and they are putting all their lives. And I have been part of helping, a couple of health workers who have been actively involved with my own personal contribution to support their well being financially in terms of otherwise and also in terms of protective equipment for them to be safe and their family. That is my contribution,” he says.

Digitalization has increased the reach

Kunal explains, “So the first thing in the digital world is knowledge, consciousness and the reach. Today anything which is known, which were earlier known in some of the manuals or some of the books, and then is to get into white paper, and it was circulated to a restricted population who knows the subject. Now, it is very porous today, if you defy, and you want to discuss something I can do in a fraction of a second and I can reach the whole world in a fraction of a second. So the biggest thing which has helped the digital world has helped us to reach every nook and corner whether it is in a remote village or its main town, this digital world has helped to the consciousness of patients today, everyone today, everybody knows what is happening, what is patient safety, whether they're following or not, that's a different question, but they know about it,” he says.

Communication and knowledge 

Kunal sheds light on the subject of ensuring patient safety from diagnostic errors, healthcare, acquired infections, medication errors, readmissions, wrong-site surgery, and communication, “Basically, it is communication and knowledge, all these things are today very much myopic towards the medical profession only and most of the common people like you and me never knew about it. So, today, it has become more exposed to all this kind of terminology which is used and people are reacting by virtue of multiple people's point of view. And it is very important and the need, it is very important today that communication and the reach are the biggest, thing which we need to do. So, you should not get misled by not bad communication, we should have a good communication for all the aspects that you said, which needs to be conscious about,” he says.

Edited By- Rabia Mistry Mulla