Zahirah McNatt,
GHLI Ethiopia Program Director
Building on GHLI’s work to improve hospital management and leadership capacity, more than 130 hospital executives, and representatives from the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), and partnering organizations recently met in Addis Ababa to discuss the design and launch of the Ethiopian Hospital Alliance for Quality (EHAQ). Minister of Health Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined the meeting to offer his support for the alliance, which is planned to launch in early 2012.
Ethiopia currently has 114 functional hospitals serving approximately 80 million citizens. The challenge to offer high quality, accessible hospital care to all of Ethiopia is daunting, but the EHAQ is an important step toward improved hospital management capacity across the country.
Seven years ago, GHLI joined FMOH and the Clinton Health Access Initiative to improve the quality of hospital care across the country. Since then, GHLI has trained more than 90 Ethiopian hospital CEOs through master’s programs in hospital and health care administration at Jimma and Addis Ababa Universities.
This past June, representatives from Ethiopia, including hospital CEOs and a representative from the FMOH, attended the annual GHLI conference at Yale, with the goal of developing a strategy to accelerate the scale-up of best practices in hospital quality improvement. Through their work, EHAQ was born.
Since the conference, the GHLI has been working with our colleagues to build high-level support for the alliance, and to develop a concrete implementation plan. It is envisioned that in the first year EHAQ member hospitals will commit to working on patient satisfaction. Several high performing facilities will be nominated as LEAD hospitals for the year and will be responsible for mentoring other facilities. All members of the alliance will receive detailed, evidence-based change packets to assist them with performance data analysis and action planning. The alliance will serve as a catalyst for this innovation and a platform for sharing of ideas across hospitals.
The alliance is not simply another new public health or development training project in Ethiopia; it is a clear statement that Ethiopian leaders are already creating innovative, Ethiopia-specific solutions to their health care delivery challenges. GHLI is pleased to be supporting Ethiopia on its path to high quality, patient centered care.
Building on GHLI’s work to improve hospital management and leadership capacity, more than 130 hospital executives, and representatives from the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), and partnering organizations recently met in Addis Ababa to discuss the design and launch of the Ethiopian Hospital Alliance for Quality (EHAQ). Minister of Health Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined the meeting to offer his support for the alliance, which is planned to launch in early 2012.
Ethiopia currently has 114 functional hospitals serving approximately 80 million citizens. The challenge to offer high quality, accessible hospital care to all of Ethiopia is daunting, but the EHAQ is an important step toward improved hospital management capacity across the country.
Seven years ago, GHLI joined FMOH and the Clinton Health Access Initiative to improve the quality of hospital care across the country. Since then, GHLI has trained more than 90 Ethiopian hospital CEOs through master’s programs in hospital and health care administration at Jimma and Addis Ababa Universities.
This past June, representatives from Ethiopia, including hospital CEOs and a representative from the FMOH, attended the annual GHLI conference at Yale, with the goal of developing a strategy to accelerate the scale-up of best practices in hospital quality improvement. Through their work, EHAQ was born.
Since the conference, the GHLI has been working with our colleagues to build high-level support for the alliance, and to develop a concrete implementation plan. It is envisioned that in the first year EHAQ member hospitals will commit to working on patient satisfaction. Several high performing facilities will be nominated as LEAD hospitals for the year and will be responsible for mentoring other facilities. All members of the alliance will receive detailed, evidence-based change packets to assist them with performance data analysis and action planning. The alliance will serve as a catalyst for this innovation and a platform for sharing of ideas across hospitals.
The alliance is not simply another new public health or development training project in Ethiopia; it is a clear statement that Ethiopian leaders are already creating innovative, Ethiopia-specific solutions to their health care delivery challenges. GHLI is pleased to be supporting Ethiopia on its path to high quality, patient centered care.