Big News in Mexico

As I have mentioned before, we know our ministry in Mexico is one of the regions of CHRISTUS Health that will significantly help us restructure our portfolio and drive us closer to our innovative one-third acute, one-third non-acute and one-third international portfolio.

I know I have previously posted about our ministry in Mexico, how we got started there, and our now swiftly growing medical travel program. As I mentioned previously, before we partnered with the Muguerza health system in Mexico, our due diligence clearly demonstrated their high quality as well as a shared mission, vision and values.

However, we were able to provide the Muguerza system with a formal organizational structure through our Journey to Excellence that required them to know their quality and measure it, and stressed the importance that all their Associates must be able to articulate what their quality measurements are and their individual part in assuring that excellence is achieved and sustained. It quickly became clear that a renewed focus on transparency and measuring quality outcomes would serve as the catalyst to propel them to excellence.

So the Associates and leadership at CHRISTUS Muguerza embarked on their own journey to achieve external confirmation of their high clinical quality. They began this journey by pursuing CAP certification in the laboratory of one hospital. Today, CHRISTUS Muguerza Alta Especialidad Hospital’s Clinical Analysis, Pathology and Cytology Laboratory is the only one in Latin America to be certified by the College of American Pathologists (CAP). They are planning to pursue this certification in each of their hospitals’ labs in the near future.

Their next goal, which is part of the CHRISTUS brand, was to achieve accreditation from the Joint Commission International. And last week, we were informed that CHRISTUS Muguerza Alta Especialidad Hospital is the first in Mexico to receive international accreditation from the Joint Commission International, which granted the hospital their Gold Seal of Approval, their highest level of approval awarded. It is rare to receive this high level as a result of an initial survey.

For those of you not familiar with Joint Commission International, it is a prestigious international health care accreditation organization, and is a subsidiary of The Joint Commission, which is the largest accreditor of health care organizations in the United States.

Joint Commission accreditation criteria focus on key functional areas such as patient safety, consistency in the therapeutic processes and infection prevention. During the inspection, hospital Associates, physicians and patients were interviewed and a detailed audit of the hospital’s practices, processes, facilities and systems was conducted.

This accreditation signifies that CHRISTUS Muguerza Alta Especialidad Hospital meets the highest international standards for quality and safety in health care services, and we expect that the remainder of the CHRISTUS Muguerza hospitals will pursue Joint Commission International accreditation as well.

I would like to take this opportunity to again congratulate all of the leadership, Associates and all the physicians at CHRISTUS Muguerza Alta Especialidad. You are living proof of my assertion that we are not in the health care business serving people, but we are in the people business, providing them with compassionate, high-quality health care in the U.S., Mexico and beyond.