Sheikh Khalifa Medical City has won Dubai Quality Award in 2014 and Dubai Human Development Appreciation Award in 2017. What was the key to this success?
The secret of our success is our people. We know there is a need to nurture and support existing and new talent to consistently provide a high quality of patient care. Our leaders, managers and staff cooperate with each other to build a future that is more prosperous, just and secure. We are on a journey to form a new era of patient care and revenue growth while taking care of the environment and sustainable career progressions for SKMC employees. We ensure that we retain talented people. Our people know what to do and how to provide the best care to our customers. This we do by promoting a culture of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams. Our HR, clinical and non-clinical teams work together to meet the ultimate needs of our stakeholders. At the same time, we also ensure that our employees contribute in promoting a culture of tolerance, happiness and engagement.
How do you sustain continuous improvement in performance?
SKMC has well-qualified clinical and non-clinical leaders, managers and staff. To sustain SKMC’s success in human resource development, we realised there was a substantial need to design a new set of learning outcomes for leaders and managers, which enhance their creative and strategic thinking. As a result, we designed a leadership and management programme called iSustain at four levels: at c-suite level, senior middle management, middle management and first-line management, both for clinical and non-clinical leaders. This is inspiring leadership groups to work strategically and creatively in providing the best-in-class patient care.
To sustain SKMC’s success in human resource development, we realised there was a substantial need to design a new set of learning outcomes for leaders and managers, which enhance their creative and strategic thinking.
We monitor HR KPIs weekly and other data to identify areas for improvement and sustain proven good practices. In future, we will focus on efficiencies and cost-effectiveness by carrying out a series of transformational projects. Our objectives remain consistently enhancing patient outcomes by engaging employees and ensuring that they enjoy a good work-life balance and appreciate a pleasant working environment.
What are the innovations and new structures you have introduced in your hospital?
During the application process, we realised that one of our key challenges was to capture HR data in a systematic fashion. We now ensure that we capture meaningful HR data, which gives us variations, trends and substantial opportunities for continuous improvement. Our focus is on enhancing the number and talent of Emiratis so they can provide effective patient care. At present, majority of leaders are Emiratis and there are succession and career development planning for all workforce including expats.
Recently we initiated a series of transformational projects in various disciplines to enhance cost-effectiveness and efficiencies. We utilise our reward and recognition scheme to appreciate those who produce original ideas that could lead to innovations. Moreover, our competence-based performance management process and system is called iPerform. Through this mechanism, a score of 5, the highest performance score, is given to people to encourage creativity and innovation. The iPerform system also contains creativity and innovation competences at five levels, from senior management to the most junior staff member by offering a systematic framework for creating and innovating services. Finally, there is a systematic research and development mechanism that is operated by the research committee. Clinical and non-clinical staff are encouraged to carry out research and publish their findings on international journals, seminars and conferences.