The Tamil Nadu government has approved a comprehensive governance framework to guarantee patient safety and positive patient experience across government health facilities in the State.

Over the past decade, Tamil Nadu has implemented several quality improvement initiatives including National Quality Assurance Standards, Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative, Kayakalp, Infection Prevention and Control Programme, Biomedical Waste Management and Patient Rights Charter, strengthening the quality of healthcare delivery.

However, patient safety and patient experience encompass multiple interdependent domains including accessibility, environmental hygiene, support services, infection prevention, patient-centred communication, digital monitoring and quality governance. Presently, these activities are implemented through multiple programme-specific committees and monitoring mechanisms, resulting in fragmented oversight and limited integration across departments, a government order said.

It cited national and global quality standards recommendations, including National Quality Assurance Standards, National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers and World Health Organisation, which emphasise strong governance, patient safety, quality management, infection control and continuous improvement. For instance, the WHO Global Patient Safety Action Plan (2021-2030) recommends establishing governance mechanisms that integrate patient safety into all levels of healthcare management and promote learning systems supported by digital technologies.

In line with this, the Mission Director, National Health Mission (NHM), Tamil Nadu, had stated the need to establish a unified governance framework for patient safety and patient experience integrating all existing quality initiatives under a single institutional mechanism without duplication of existing statutory committees.

The governance framework will function through six thematic pillars - Navigation and Accessibility, Environmental Hygiene, Environmental Support Services, Patient Safety and Infection Prevention, Patient and Attender Experience, Monitoring, Data Analytics and Quality Improvement.

The government gave the nod to constitute a State Apex Committee for Patient Safety and Patient Experience and committees at the district and hospital levels. State Technical Committees for the six thematic pillars will function under the apex committee.

The Facility Level Pillar Committees at medical college hospitals, district headquarters hospitals and sub district hospitals/peripheral hospitals, while Patient Advisory Panel to oversee patient safety and experience will be formed in institutions functioning under the Directorate of Medical Education and Research, and Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services.

The Health Secretary is the chairperson and Mission Director of NHM is the member secretary for the State Apex Committee, which will have 20 members including a patient representative/NGO. The district committee will be chaired by the respective Collector.

The Mission Director stated that a dedicated Programme Management Unit will function under the NHM for State-wide coordination monitoring and technical support, and an integrated platform for monitoring patient safety and patient experience in coordination with the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation will be developed. This platform may include QR Code-based patient feedback, Artificial Intelligence, assisted multilingual voice feedback, geo-tagged service-specific feedback, AI-supported sentiment analysis, dashboard-based performance monitoring, automated alert systems, corrective action tracking, facility ranking and benchmarking and integration with NQAS, Kayakalp and other quality programmes, the order said.

Published - July 28, 2026 08:49 pm IST