………. first local hospital to be so certified

DR Balwant Singh’s Hospital (BSH) announced on Tuesday that it had received an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Certification, the first local hospital to be so certified.

The BSH received this certification through Perry Johnson Registrars, Inc., of Michigan, USA and will help the institution to be better equipped to offer improved services.

BSH Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Madhu Singh stated that, “We are delighted to have received the news of our ISO certification. We did this in order to ensure that we are providing the highest quality of healthcare at our facility in keeping with the goal we set ourselves from the very beginning 15 years ago. There was no requirement that we do this, but we did it anyway because we believe that it is important for us and for the patients who look to us to care for them.

“The very work required for the audit has also pushed us to operate at even higher standards than we were already performing and all of us have grown through this process.
“We are very grateful to all the staff, especially the doctors and management team for the extensive work that was completed before and during the audit, to ensure that we get the ISO certification,” she said.

Dr Singh added that the services audited during the ISO certification process included Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Nephrology and Dialysis, ICU Services, Emergency Services, Assisted Reproductive Technology, including VE, Ophthalmology, Dentistry, Radiology, Paediatrics and Neonatology, and Cardiology. These services now join the laboratory which was certified to the ISO15189 Standard two years ago.

The BSH is also celebrating fifteen (15) years of existence when they metamorphosed from being a lab to a hospital. It was also the first lab to be certified by the Guyana National Bureau of Standards, under the then Executive Director Dr Chatterpaul Ramcharran. That very lab was already accredited two years ago to the ISO 15189 Standard; that makes the BSH the only hospital in Guyana with an accredited lab.

In making the announcement, Dr Singh singled out Ms Candelle Walcott and Ms Rodlyn Semple of the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS), and Mr Dixon Hooper for all the support and guidance that they provided over the years and in leading up to the audit.