World Patient Safety Day 2023

The Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) is a statutory regulator of the healthcare sector established through the National Health Act of 2003. The Office joins the healthcare community worldwide in observing World Patient Safety Day on 17 September, a global public health day, observed under the theme: “Engaging patients for patient safety”.

World Patient Safety Day is one of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global public health days observed annually on 17 September. The global campaign was established in 2019 with the objectives of increasing public awareness and engagement; enhancing global understanding of the significance of patient safety; working towards global solidarity and action by Member States to enhance patient safety; and reduce patient harm.

Being the health regulator mandated to ensure quality and safety in healthcare on behalf of our health users, we persist in our efforts to ensure safety through conducting compliance inspections at health establishments to assess establishments’ compliance with the national health system norms and standards. Inspection tools have been developed to assess health establishments in different levels of care to provide safe and quality health services within the health system. The development of inspection tools is an important part of the process of OHSC in ensuring health establishments are assessed comprehensively in line with the relevant regulations. In addition to the inspection tools, a compliance status framework has been developed to ensure that the OHSC and health establishments have a common understanding of the way inspection findings are processed toward the compliance decision. A certificate of compliance is issued to a compliant health establishment and a notice of compliance to a non-compliant health establishment.

As an institution, we continue to closely monitor indicators of risk to identify serious breaches of norms and standards through the Early Warning System (EWS). Information collected guides the authorities to address challenges that may result in serious harm to users. The EWS recommendations report outlines the trends in breaches of norms and standards, as they relate to patient safety and overall health system weaknesses and provides explicit recommendations to address these weaknesses.

Furthermore, the OHSC works closely with the Office of the Health Ombud (OHO) mandated to protect and promote the health and safety of healthcare users by considering, investigating, and disposing of complaints in the national health system. These complaints relate to non-compliance with prescribed norms and standards. The OHSC and OHO urge healthcare users and the public to report any poor quality of healthcare received from both public and private facilities to the Office of the Health Ombud through our Toll-Free Call Centre number at 080 911 6472 or email complaints@ohsc.org.za.