COHSASA-accredited hospital earns top award for health excellence in Nigeria

The entrance of Reddington Hospital in Lagos

Staff at the hospital have partly attributed its success to Reddington’s continued participation in the COHSASA accreditation programme which it entered in July 2008. The hospital was first accredited in 2012 for two years until 2014, with a score of 96 out of a possible 100.

The hospital re-entered the accreditation programme and earned a three-year accreditation from 2015 to 2018. The three-year accreditation award signifies continuing excellence and is conferred on a facility that has maintained compliance with standards over time – in this case COHSASA’s Hospital Standards, which are internationally accredited by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua).

According to Nigeria’s online news agency, The Nation, the hospital’s Chief Operations Officer, Emmanuel Matthews, said at the annual NHEA ceremony that achieving the award was a testimony to the hospital’s ethos of continuously striving for excellence in all areas of the services it offered patients. (See: http://thenationonlineng.net/reddington-hospital-wins-best-healthcare-award/)

Interviewed after the ceremony, Emmanuel Matthews said that the good thing about the COHSASA standards is that “they keep us on our toes” and make sure that we comply with requirements and plan our services so that they are acceptable to our patients. We know how we have benefitted and that is why we recommend COHSASA to many of our colleagues and to other healthcare institutions.”

In a letter commending the hospital for its efforts, CEO of COHSASA, Ms Jacqui Stewart wrote, “Congratulations to you and your team at Reddington. You must all be immensely proud to have won this award for a third consecutive year.”

The hospital’s website explains it from their perspective: “Reddington Hospital first entered the programme to establish a baseline score. This allowed us to identify deficiencies against COHSASA's standards which form the blueprint of how to provide safe and quality care. The standards are both comprehensive and challenging and consider all aspects of how the hospital operates and is managed including:

Quality improvement programmes
Documentation audit
Health record audit
Health and safety programmes
Staff appraisal plan
Strategic management plan
Negative incidents
Patient complaints
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation

“To enable us to address deficiencies, Reddington people at every level were involved to identify improvements and a significant investment was made in facilities as well. For example, the surgical theatre was renovated and the laundry was redesigned to improve and comply with infection control standards. All policies, procedures and protocols were reviewed and continuous training took place to embed the new processes and standards.”