Foundation Partners Lagos on Health Insurance Scheme Kick Off

Martins Ifijeh
PharmAccess Foundation recently organised a one-week Quality Assessor training for State Quality Champions from the Lagos State Ministry of Health and health agencies.
Participants were drawn from various units and department within Lagos State Ministry of Health, Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency, Health Services Commission and Primary Health Care Board.
The workshop was organised to strengthen the capacity of the State’s Quality Champions to support improvement efforts of healthcare facilities under the mandatory Lagos State Health Insurance Scheme (LSHS) which will be soon by His Excellency, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. This is in line with Lagos State’s determination to provide enrollees with affordable quality oriented healthcare regardless of social or economic status, gender or location within the state.
The week-long training led by the SafeCare Program Director, Dr. Ibironke Dada, focused on the use of PharmAccess SafeCare quality improvement methodology for assessing and improving the quality and safety of healthcare services. SafeCare Standards are accredited by the International Society of Quality in Health Care (ISQua) and is currently being used in other African countries.
Participants opined that SafeCare tools would complement existing quality assurance tools in Lagos State. “This training has opened my eyes to how we can help the facilities improve on service delivery, before this time I had always wondered about the interpretation of the SafeCare standards,” the Quality Improvement Officer,Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr. Onome Agbedia said.
The Service Delivery Director and Quality Lead, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr. Emmanuella Zamba, thanked PharmAccess Foundation for an insightful training and was optimistic about how the application of SafeCare standards will foster a transparent selection and empanelment of facilities based on their SafeCare assessment results.