The Institut Guttmann uses a communication system that guarantees the development of a direct, fluid and two-way circuit of information with all stakeholders (detected and analysed).
Both internally and externally, communication is a first-class tool to detect, plan and satisfy one’s own information needs and those of others, working to improve the institution’s fame, social prestige and reputation, and creating partnerships with professionals, associations of people with disabilities, entities, authorities and society in general, especially with the specific groups with which the organisation relates.
Regarding communication with stakeholders, the following actions were carried out in 2020:
1. On 12 March, before the imminent proclamation of the first state of alarm by the Government of Spain, the Crisis Committee was created, designing the Covid-19 contingency plan that covered the Badalona Neurorehabilitation Hospital and Guttmann Barcelona alike. This plan established the rules to follow to face the pandemic and ensure that the organisation offered the best possible safety conditions for our patients, their families and our professionals. The Committee was made up of a broad representation of professionals from the different healthcare and non-healthcare areas of the organisation.
2. To help cope with the high level of pressure suffered by front-line healthcare professionals and the need to cope with unprecedented situations and experiences, which generate high levels of stress and emotional suffering, the group of psychologists and neuropsychologists of the Institut Guttmann created a telephone or videoconference follow-up service to respond to psychological demands in an agile way. The Neuropsychology Area created a team, made up of 4 psychologists, who offered psychological support to 143 professionals during this period, making a total of 404 calls.
3. A Family Care Service run by our team of professional psychologists and neuropsychologists to help people cope with the stress, anguish and anxiety caused by the pandemic situation and the fact that people could not visit their loved ones in the hospital.
4. Also with a view to improving care for patients and families from home, the “Covid-19 Platform” was created in SiiDON to provide guidelines, exercises, videos and specific recommendations during and after lockdown. 86% of pages were viewed with over 23,000 visits in 4 months. The platform also created its own website covid.guttmann.com to inform patients and families about the main biosecurity measures to prevent the pandemic, care programmes, operating standards in the hospital, etc.
5. With the aim of making a tool available to everybody over 50 years old to help them maintain their brain health and try to minimise the impact of lockdown during the pandemic, we developed an adapted version of the cognitive telerehabilitation platform Guttmann, NeuroPersonalTrainer, Open GNPT. Over four months, a total of 3,500 people registered and completed over 95,000 cognitive training tasks.
6. Work has been carried out throughout the organisation on designing and implementing the new Plan for the Humanisation of Care Activity and the Empowerment of the Patient and their Families which is forecast to run for 3 years.
7. A secure instant messaging platform called MedXat has been launched for treatment where groups associated with patients are automatically generated according to the assigned therapeutic team. This has made it possible to improve communication between professionals, guaranteeing the confidentiality of data.
8. We have participated in the working group led by the Department of Health, updating the new Manual of Hospital Evaluators, based on the Accreditation Model of acute hospital care centres in Catalonia, which follows the philosophy of the EFQM Excellence Model.
9. A boost has been given to the measurement of the Perception of User Satisfaction, both in-patients and outpatients, with the implementation of a new survey model and assessment system. The results obtained were 83.7% regarding the quality perceived by in-patients on the overall assessment of care, and 84.6% in the case of outpatients.
10. The website, intranet and Fulls Informativo (internal communication magazine) have been used to disseminate the fact that people can directly inform Management of any breach of the Code of Ethics, Code of Conduct or opinions, complaints and suggestions regarding CSR.
11. For care issues, the channel established through the admissions area continues to receive opinions, complaints and suggestions. During 2020, 19 complaints/claims were received (8 more than in 2019), of which 8 were directly related to the pandemic and which have been handled as established in our protocols, in writing and within an average delay of 6.7 days. Of all the complaints, 15 were related to the care process and 4 to services and compliance with internal regulations.
12. As usual, our organisation’s CSR report was sent to all interest groups. Some were printed and others (the majority) were in digital format.
Relationship with suppliers
Suppliers of goods and subcontractors follow the same procedure for selection and adjudication within a framework of free competition and excluding any relationship or interference outside the interests of the organisation. The Institut Guttmann always demands reciprocal honesty in its commercial relations, full respect for current regulations and, in particular, that which refers to the compulsory hiring of people with disabilities; also relevant are those that refer to the protection of children, environmental protection and labour protection. It meets annually with the heads of the main subcontracted companies and ratifies the code of conduct, verifying that they are aware of its existence and performance.
The Institut Guttmann informs all its suppliers of the environmental requirements that we ask of all our suppliers, as well as requesting their involvement and commitment to preserving and caring for the environment.
Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct
During 2020, no non-compliance has been detected, nor has any complaint related to the Code of Ethics or the Code of Conduct been received from suppliers and collaborating entities.
