Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya visits Safdarjung Hospital, informally interacts with faculty and staff to seek their frank feedback on hospital improvement measures

Gives strong message of ‘Zero Tolerance’ for poor performance

“Let us make Safdarjung a hub for telemedicine for northern India”

Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare visited Safdarjung Hospital today and had an informal interactive session with Heads of Departments and Staff of Safdarjung Hospital and Vardhman Mahavir Medical College. He spent more than 2.5 hours with the heads of various departments, nurses, heads of security and sanitation services and listened with patience to their numerous suggestions on quality hospital management, clinical practices, infection control measures, sanitation processes and patient-centered high quality healthcare provision. They shared their experience of working for providing round the clock services to the poor, needy and underprivileged during the pandemic.

The Union Minister emphasized on the best output and performance-oriented work culture through efficient coordination, with the goal of providing highest quality healthcare to the patients. He urged everyone to instill a mentality of accepting criticism and work towards institutional building through shared goals, aims and work culture. “Our goal should be on how to provide the best healthcare to every patient who walks in. When we have clarity on this goal and our resultant role, all our actions will also become clear and action oriented”, he stated.

Dr Mandaviya gave a very strong message that there will be zero tolerance to poor standard of work at all levels. “No one should feel that absenteeism and poor performance shall go unnoticed”, he emphasized. The Union Health Minister exhorted all HoDs to evaluate performance and attendance of all employees at all levels including the security and contractual staff to ensure that absenteeism and poor-quality work is effectively addressed. He encouraged the teams in each department to not only achieve superior targets but sustain the high-performance standards. “It is easy to achieve very high performance for a short time, but extremely difficult to sustain such exemplary standards of healthcare delivery”, he noted.

Dr Mandaviya motivated all the teams to work towards converting Safdarjung Hospital into a highly reputed hospital of highest quality. “The Ministry is committed to supporting the hospital in all its endeavour”, he stated.

Dr Mandaviya also advised the HoDs to meet their teams every week, undertake physical visit of all departments and evaluate their performance to ensure best output. Noting that we have a huge advantage due the large number of patients that public sector hospitals treat, the Minister exhorted them to make analytical studies and publish them in reputed and popular journals.

Taking confidence from the efficient handling of the COVID19 pandemic in the country, the Union Minister praised the Indian doctors for leaving an imprint globally. He stated that “it is now time to develop our healthcare model and show to the world our strengths in various aspects of healthcare, pharma and R&D”.  He congratulated the hospital for receiving the 1^st Kayakalp Award of Rs 3 Crore.

Prof. (Dr.) Sunil Kumar, Director General of Health Services, Dr S V Arya, Medical Superintendant, Safdarjung Hospital, Heads of various departments, Heads of Sanitation and Kayakalp cell were present in the meeting.