Alliance aims to improve hospital leadership, patient care in Ethiopia

Tewodros Adhanom, Ethiopia's minister of health, speaks at the workshop l

Tewodros Adhanom, Ethiopia's minister of health, speaks at the workshop launching the Ethiopian Hospital Alliance for Quality.

The Ethiopian Hospital Alliance for Quality (EHAQ) was launched in early April by the African nation’s Ministry of Health and key partners, including Yale Global Health Leadership Institute (GHLI).

GHLI has been working with the Ethiopian ministry to improve hospital-level management for more than six years, but the concept for EHAQ was created in 2011 when delegates from Ethiopia attended the GHLI conference with the goal of developing a strategy to catalyze nationwide improvement in hospital performance.

"EHAQ is designed to create a network of hospitals that are committed to helping one another improve services, with an initial focus on patient satisfaction," said Elizabeth Bradley, faculty director of GHLI.

The program is modeled after the successful American College of Cardiology door-to-balloon alliance in the United States, for which GHLI provided research and evaluation support. EHAQ is led by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopia’s minister of health.

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While there have been many targeted and successful quality-oriented collaborations engaging networks of hospitals, this is the first country-wide alliance in Africa, notes Bradley.

"The EHAQ program is unique because we work with hospital to make what they already have in place more effective - without adding undue costs or need for additional resources on their part. Then the hospitals share locally-developed innovations among their peer institutions," she explains.

"This is very much an Ethiopian developed and managed initiative," adds Bradley. "We are very proud to be part of such a dynamic approach to building management and leadership capacity in Ethiopia."