Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) is committed to delivering the safest, most effective and most compassionate care to each and every one of our patients.
In January 2016, HMC achieved the significant distinction of becoming the first healthcare system across the globe to have all its hospitals accredited by Joint Commission International (JCI) under the Academic Medical Center accreditation program.
JCI accreditation is based on quality and safety across all clinical and management functions and is considered the gold standard in global healthcare.
HMC is also the first hospital system in the Middle East to achieve institutional accreditation from the ACGME International LLC, which demonstrates excellence in the way medical graduates are trained through residency, internship and fellowship programs. Qatar is the second country outside of the United States to have the prestigious accreditation conferred upon it, which indicates that it meets the highest and most rigorous standards for physicians’ specialized training.
The Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) is an international non-profit consortium of health care institutions who are dedicated to the development and evaluation of novel therapies for support of failing organ systems. The primary mission of the Organization is to maintain a registry of, at least, use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in active ELSO centers.
The ELSO Award for Excellence in Life Support recognizes ECLS programs worldwide that distinguish themselves by having processes, procedures and systems in place that promote excellence and exceptional care in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
In September 2017, the Ambulance Service was successfully reaccredited against the JCI’s Medical Transport Organization Standard Second Edition. This achievement means HMC’s Ambulance Service is now part of a very small group of ambulance services across the world holding this prestigious accreditation.
This is the third time the Ambulance Service has been accredited by JCI, having first received this award in 2011 and with subsequent reaccreditation in 2014. In previous JCI Medical Transport Organization assessments, the Ambulance Service was required to meet 73 standards. This latest assessment was by far the most stringent appraisal of quality and safety in the service’s history, with 134 standards and 479 measurable elements.
Our Hospitality Department was in July 2017 recognized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and awarded the ISO 9001:2015 certification for its quality management system. An organization becomes ISO 9001:2015 certified by developing, documenting, and effectively implementing its quality system to meet the requirements of the standard and then successfully completing an audit by a third party registrar.
In 2017, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics announced that two Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) facilities, the Heart Hospital and the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR), have achieved the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Record Adoption ModelSM (EMRAM) Stage 6 distinction, an international benchmark for the use of advanced IT to improve patient care. This is the first HIMSS Stage 6 achievement in Qatar.
The HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 accreditation demonstrates that electronic physician documentation has been installed throughout the entire hospital with structured documentation templates – allowing physicians to ‘point-and-click’ from a standardized selection of options that facilitate future reporting and data analysis.
In November 2014, Hamad Medical Corporation’s Trauma System is the first international organization to be recognized by Accreditation Canada International’s Trauma Distinction Award.
The four year accreditation is only given to trauma systems who can demonstrate adherence to a stringent quality measures and international standards.
The Distinction program has four main components: meeting international standards of excellence, implementing protocols, achieving performance indicator thresholds and demonstrating excellence and innovation. It offers rigorous and highly specialized standards of excellence, in-depth performance indicators and protocols, and an on-site visit by expert evaluators with extensive practical experience in trauma.
Achieving Trauma Distinction demonstrates HMC’s national and regional leadership in the provision of high quality trauma care.
Hamad’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DLMP) completed a comprehensive inspection by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) in April 2014 and accreditation was confirmed in the summer 2014. CAP accreditation is considered the gold standard of laboratory accreditation and requires successful performance in stringent proficiency testing, quality control of procedures, staff qualifications, safety programs and overall management. It recognizes laboratories that positively impact patient care and is in line with Hamad’s strategic objective to deliver the best and safest integrated clinical care system in the GCC region.
In early 2014, Hamad became the first organization in the GCC, and only the third in the Middle East, to be accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). This achievement places Hamad among an elite class of healthcare organizations around the world and demonstrates the importance placed on providing staff with professional development opportunities. The accreditation is valid for two years and requires adherence to rigorous standards. The ANCC is a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association (ANA) and is dedicated to the promotion of excellence in nursing and healthcare through credentialing programs. ANCC accreditation is a voluntary peer review process intended to strengthen and sustain the quality and integrity of continuing nursing education. ANCC’s internationally renowned credentialing programs certify and recognize individual nurses in specialty practice areas.
The International Academy of Emergency Dispatch (IAED) has officially recognized the Ambulance Service Medical Communication Center as an Accredited Center of Excellence. The center is the first in the Middle East to receive this accreditation, which comes as the result of two and a half years of hard work and commitment to meet the 25 requirements of the IAED. The Ambulance Service Medical Communication Center provides a number of tools to the Ambulance Service to triage the received calls and deploy the most appropriate resource in a standardized and consistent manner.
This system has been implemented in several countries across the Middle East and provides pre-arrival instructions to the dispatcher which is given to the caller in case of an emergency. Following this protocol helps in collecting accurate and consistent documentation, as well as data capture that gives several opportunities for data analysis and research.
At the end of 2014 the HMC Ambulance Service LifeFlight service, was accredited by the European Aeromedical Institute (EURAMI) for both adult and pediatric critical care. The service received reaccreditation in July 2018.
This accreditation has been awarded following rigorous evaluation of the LifeFlight service against quality, management and performance measures. EURAMI accredited aeromedical services are known to be amongst the best in the world.
In November 2012, Hamad became the first hospital system in the region to achieve institutional accreditation from the ACGME International LLC. This makes Qatar only the second country outside of the United States to have the prestigious accreditation conferred upon it, which indicates that it meets the highest and most rigorous standards for physicians’ specialty training. This is a significant achievement and means Hamad will attract, train and retain the top medical graduates and clinical faculty from Qatar and around the world. It has been effective from 1 July, 2012 so that students studying in this academic year will be educated under this accreditation. Under the ACGME International LLC structure, trainee doctors undergo structured specialist training conducted by dedicated senior clinicians after graduating from medical school. They are regularly assessed on their medical knowledge, patient care skills, professionalism, interpersonal and communication skills to ensure the aspiring specialist doctors provide excellent care. This accreditation also marks a key milestone in the transformation of Hamad into an Academic Health System and demonstrates the organization's ongoing commitment to high quality care and patient safety.
