SEMM Mautone raises quality standards with a new certification

Miguel García, general manager of the SEMM Mautone Sanatorium, said that quality in the health sector has a direct impact on offering a better service to people. “When you have insufficient quality, you have problems of loss of life, permanent or temporary injuries, among many other possible difficulties. So they are key issues for people and society in general ”, he asserted.

Therefore, what is quality in health? “Some of us may think that quality is being served quickly, others that it is a luxurious building and so on. And also that health companies in general mention that their services are of quality. In other words, you hardly see someone who says they are doing disastrous things. Therefore, given the complexity of defining what quality is, we understand that it is best to adapt your services, your processes, to a standard”, García continued.

Minister Daniel Salinas and the Quality team of the SEMM Mautone Sanatorium.

“In this case, ISO 9001, which is an international standard with sufficient experience and support, which has proven that if you do things as the standard tells you, your possibility of having adverse results due to poor quality is very low. It is very low because we do not forget that in general services, and in health services in particular, we always talk about people. And people are not machines that can be programmed, and therefore sometimes we may not act correctly. But anyway, the ISO standard also provides for it. In other words, he sees mistakes not as a punishment, but as a source of learning”, emphasized the general manager of SEMM Mautone.

ISO 9001:2015 is one of the best-known and most used international standards worldwide, which allows improving the quality of services, making processes more efficient and focusing the daily objective on customer satisfaction.

The application of this standard in the institution is key because it implies guarantees of compliance with international standards and improvement of care processes, as well as meeting customer expectations. To make this goal a reality, the SEMM Mautone Sanatorium relied on the commitment and involvement of the entire team of collaborators.

García said in this regard that this standard covers “the needs of all the parties interested in health”, which are the users, “the axis and the reason for being the whole system”, the administrative ones, fundamental to achieve a fast and agile consultation, and that they “treat you well”, and the workers, “another important part that the norm considers”.

Camila Casas

Lucia Vidal and Pablo Garcia.

“In what sense? To give them security, a work environment and adequate tools and hygiene conditions. And also, training, in the event that he did not have it, to perform adequately in his tasks, ”he stressed. And she did not forget the providers, as the support of the quality chain in health services: “You have to have an adequate supply in quantity and quality,” she said.

García mentioned that they presented the planning to the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), and the portfolio approved it, for the next five years in terms of quality. “Someone from outside has to come to tell us if we are complying or not with what the norm requires. This has been a process of 10 years of work, very long, with thousands and thousands of hours of work,” said the spokesperson for an institution with 1,200 workers, which won the National Quality Award in 2019 and is nominated for the edition 2022 of the Ibero-American Quality Award.

“For us it exists as a trilogy that is the quality, the norms and the certification of what you say you do and that is also approved by external means”, he said. “And the quality trilogy is a voluntary process, which is a path undertaken by the SEMM Mautone Sanatorium, in which there was no pressure from the authorities, nor a prerequisite that you have to comply with certain standards. We are absolutely convinced that this is the way because they raise the standards of care for us, ”he concluded.